HAPPY END
2024/2025 — Season 69

Article 55

Directed by: Tjaša Črnigoj
"Everyone shall be free to decide whether to bear children. The state shall guarantee the opportunities for exercising this freedom and shall create such conditions as will enable parents to decide to bear children." (Article 55 of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia)
Première: May 2025
Cast
Credits
  • Dramaturgy: Urška Brodar, Tjaša Črnigoj
  • Assistant dramaturg: Helena Šukljan
  • Set and costume design: Tijana Todorović
  • Set designer assistant: Lene Lekše
  • Music and sound: Tomaž Grom
  • Video: Hana Vodeb
  • Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj
  • Stage manager: Liam Hlede/Urša Červ
Description

Slovenia has the right to contraception and elective pregnancy termination enshrined in its constitution. In Slovenia, safe abortion is relatively accessible, and hormonal contraception is mostly covered by insurance. This is a rarity worldwide.

Article 55 will travel back to the 1980s and early 1990s. It will reconstruct the time in which the socialist system was coming to a close and the entire region experienced a surge in nationalist tendencies, but which was also marked by new civil movements and feminism. As a socialist republic, Slovenia had the right to choose to bear children written in the constitution since 1974, however, this right was questioned during the process of the country gaining independence.  

The most heated polemics about the new constitution were triggered by the article concerning women’s reproductive rights. Some suggested simply to leave it out. Women’s or feminist groups fought determinedly against it and insisted that these rights remain enshrined in the Constitution.

The documentary production will be based on archival materials, the reflections of that time and the talks with the members of the feminist initiatives of the time and the fighters for women’s reproductive rights. It will thus shed light on the story of creating groups, support and alliances, which have resulted in the right to choose being protected by the Constitution of Slovenia today.