“To give birth to soldiers!” is the call of the President Vladimir Putin’s natalist crusadewhich these days has access to legal abortion as the main enemy. For decades, that country has been going through a demographic crisis, which was aggravated as a result of the coronavirus and the losses on the front in Ukraine. AND in line with the increasingly conservative doctrine of the Kremlina multitude of Russian regions began to restrict the right to abortion in public and private clinics. It also became more difficult to obtain emergency contraception.
For years, Russia has implemented a policy of financial incentives for those who choose to continue a pregnancy. This position took on new meaning since the war, when increasing the birth rate became “a matter of national survival.”
Russian-style homophobia and misogyny
President Vladimir Putin’s constant references to “recover traditional family values”. So are the measures that the Federal Assembly has been taking in recent years. against the LGBTQ communityFor example, laws that criminalize reassignment surgeries in the case of trans people and that prohibit “propaganda gay”. The latter sanctions “promoting” any type of non-heterosexual relationship in public spaces, the media, and art. In this framework it was that official conservatism adopted reproductive rights as a new target.
Termination of pregnancy is a legal and accessible procedure in the Russian health system, but in recent months, an avalanche of new regulations attempts to limit access to this. In August and November, Two Russian regions – Mordovia and Tver – passed legislation that punished anyone who “forced” women to abort.. In October, a law was approved that restricts access to abortion medicationsmeasures that could also affect the sale of some contraceptives.
Meanwhile, all private health clinics in the Russian-occupied Crimea announced that they will no longer perform abortions under any circumstances. Konstantin Skorupsky, Minister of Health of Crimea, urged directors of private clinics to stop “providing” legal termination of pregnancy. He asked them to commit to a patriotic mission: “do their part to improve the demographic situation” in the occupied peninsula.
Other private clinics in Russia have also limited the provision of that service. While, People with the capacity to conceive are pressured to go to the public system, where waiting times are long. In this way, it is speculated that they will lose the opportunity to do so after the legally contemplated twelve weeks. Additionally, staff place emphasis on convincing patients to continue their pregnancies. It is the official line drop.
Genealogy of legal abortion
Although Bolshevik Russia was the first country in the world to decriminalize abortion in 1920the Kremlin is now slowly approaching the anti-abortion line of the Orthodox Church.
Following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, in 1920 the Russian Soviet Republic under Lenin became the first country in the world in the modern era in allowing abortion in all circumstances, but throughout the 20th century, the legality of abortion changed more than once. Between 1936 and 1955 it was prohibited without exceptions, but from then on it was legalized again.
For feminist activism in that country, the pressures that have intensified in recent months are not a surprise. The legal window to access an abortion has been slowly narrowing since the 1990swhen women could terminate their pregnancies unconditionally up to 12 weeks or up to 22 weeks for a wide range of “social reasons”, such as divorce, unemployment or lack of income.
The list of reasons has been gradually reduced under Putin’s leadership and since 2012 the only cause considered is rape.
In 2009, Russia reported 1.2 million abortions, out of a population of 143 million people. By 2020, the number of annual abortions had already been drastically reduced -450,000- due to policies to hinder it.
Male mortality and demographic crisis
Authorities say their goal is to improve Russia’s demography, catastrophic since the end of the Soviet era, despite evidence that restricting abortion does not increase birth rates and puts women at risk.
And although the right to abortion until now has never been directly questioned, More and more voices are being raised in favor of its restriction, especially since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“When a country is at war, this is generally accompanied by these types of measures,” Leda Garina, a Russian feminist activist who lives in exile in Georgia, told AFP. The move, she says, sends a clear message to Russian women: “Stay at home and give birth to more soldiers.”
Putin sets himself up as an apostle of large families in the name of “traditional” and patriotic values, mixing morality and demographic problems to justify his position. And he presents Russia as the counterweight to a decadent West: feminist and friendly to the LGBT community.
Although this week he claimed to be against banning abortion, Putin insisted that The termination of pregnancy was against the interests of the country. The 71-year-old president declared that he wanted women to “preserve the life of the baby” in order to “solve the demographic problem.” Putin, who is running for a new term in March 2024, has also made the defense of conservative family values a major axis of his policy..
Economic incentives
In public clinics, there are already consultation spaces in order to discourage women from aborting, but the Ministry of Health recommends a more forceful strategy. According to Russian demographer Viktoria Sakevich, Hospitals must now “stop, pressure, scare” women. In some regions, there are financial rewards for doctors who manage to convince a patient not to abort.
The majority of women who have abortions in Russia are already mothers with financial difficulties, and Sakievich fears that a repressive policy will make A dangerous black market for abortion pills emerged, including, over time, clandestine surgical interventions. However, this restrictive policy does not convince everyone in Putin’s entourage.
Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the upper house of Parliament, warned that banning abortion would have “tragic consequences.” For political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, the Russian authorities are wrong to direct their natalist crusade towards women. “They should fight against early mortality in menthe main cause of population decline, instead of trying to encourage women to have more children,” he said. A taboo topic at a time when the Kremlin is sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines.
