The headline on the Balkan Insight website read: “Brnabic Baby ‘Won’t Help Us’, Serbia’s LGBTI Groups Warn.” It was a remarkable turn of events for gay rights in a country that had achieved some historic milestones: not only had it elected one of the world’s first openly gay heads of state, Ana Brnabic, but when she gave birth to a son earlier this year it was heralded by campaigners as a watershed moment. Within a month of the birth of the “Brnabic Baby,” however, the Serbian government’s health minister imposed a ban on anyone with a “history of homosexual relations during the last five years” from donating “reproductive cells.” The law essentially banned same-sex couples from having children unless, according to Radio Free Europe, “like Brnabic’s partner had done — they travel abroad to undergo the necessary medical procedures.” Same-sex couples were already banned from adopting children in Serbia.
Serbia
