Postsecular conflict? Prolife/prochoice movement in Croatia, specific example of march for life in Zagreb
Abstract
The conflict between the pro-life and pro-choice movement around the question of the right of abortion can be put in the category of the (global) cultural wars, as a postsecular conflict. Croatia is a region which significand desecularization tendencies can be observed, together with the return of religion into the public space.
It is a region in which the Catholic Church intervenes in the debates on the right of abortion and shapes the public discourse about this issue. For a recontextualization of the Croatian context, the text uses the definition of the four dimensions of the post-secular conflict by Kristina Stoeckl has operationalized this term.
Based on the content analysis of newspaper articles in five different periodicals between 2016 and 2020 that all explicitly mention the March for Life in Zagreb, and the application of the definition of conflict on this specific example of March for Life in Zagreb, Croatia does not fit into the Western context that Stoeckl mostly works with. The difference lies in the position of the church in society and the intertwining of religious and national identity.
These are crucial for the context of the conflict between the pro-life and pro-choice movements: this conflict plays out not only on the conservative-liberal line but also the religious-secular one.