Jutarnji list daily reports that the Government of Croatia, fearing the draft Law on Artificial Insemination may fall at the Constitutional Court on charges of discrimination, plans to allow couples living out-of-wedlock to have the right to medically assisted insemination.

Jutarnji list writes that constitutional experts warned the Government that the Constitutional Court, in accordance with Article 41 of the Constitution, treats unmarried couples equally and provides them equal rights and protection as married couples.

A source in the Parliamentary Club of the ruling Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) claims that the Sabor received an opinion from the Faculty of Law that the current provision is fine, invoking analogy with the provision from the Law on Citizenship which states that partners in out-of-wedlock unions are not entitled to citizenship.

The source adds that the Law will not allow for freezing of embryos, major objection of both experts in the field and civil society associations, claiming that "existence of genetic code in the embryo means, de facto, that the embryo is a human being and disposal of frozen embryos would be paramount to murder.

At the beginning of the month, RODA Parents association started a petition demanding that the Draft-Law is revoked from procedure, protesting its conservative nature and seeing it as unacceptable in its disregard for the needs and feelings of infertile couples.