January 13, 2025
By Current Time and Chris Rickleton
With Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring 2024 the Year of the Family, the pressure was on lawmakers and local governments to go the extra mile.
They didn't disappoint.
From an intensifying campaign against abortions, new "family studies" classes for schoolchildren, and tougher hurdles to get divorced, last year saw Russia invade new territory in its fight for "traditional family values."
Continued: https://www.rferl.org/a/33273068.html
By Moscow Times Reporter
Sept 28, 2024
Women’s rights activists across the globe on Saturday marked International Safe Abortion Day. But for many in Russia, the occasion was a bitter reminder of how far the country’s government has backtracked on its once-liberal abortion policies, leaving thousands of women with increasingly limited access to safe, affordable and timely abortion care.
This week, the Far East Primorye region became the 11th Russian region to outlaw “coercion” into abortion, a term that encompasses actions such as persuasion, bribery, deceit, blackmail or workplace pressure that compel women to terminate a pregnancy.
Sep 27, 2024
Alexander Ryumin / TASS
High school students in Russia’s Far East were shown a graphic video of a medical abortion video during an unannounced lecture, the Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported Friday.
“Many felt sick while watching,” the outlet wrote, citing students from school No. 7 in the Sakhalin region town of Okha, around 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) east of Moscow.
A video accompanying the report showed students turning away in the school auditorium as the footage played on a large screen. According to Ostorozhno Novosti, students were told to “turn away” if they felt uncomfortable watching the close-up procedure.
Sep 25, 2024
Alexander Ryumin / TASS
Lawmakers in Russia’s Far East Primorye region on Wednesday passed a law outlawing the act of “coercing” women into having an abortion, a move that comes as federal lawmakers debate a bill to ban the so-called “childfree movement.”
The new law defines “coercion” into abortion as actions such as persuasion, bribery, deceit, blackmail or workplace pressure that compel women to terminate a pregnancy. It imposes administrative fines on public sector workers and institutions ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 rubles ($54 to nearly $1,100).
Dec 28, 2023
Moscow Times
The Russian Orthodox Church announced it has adopted a document equating abortion to murder amid growing ultra-conservative calls for a nationwide ban and several regions restricting the procedure.
“The Church unequivocally equates arbitrary surgical or medical abortion to murder, regardless of the gestational age and the manner in which it is carried out,” Church spokesman Vladimir Legoyda said in a statement Wednesday evening.
Dec 18, 2023
A group of Russian lawmakers has rejected a bill that would bar all private clinics in the country from providing abortion services, the business newspaper Vedomosti reported Monday, citing a letter sent to the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament.
Members of the Russian State Duma’s Committee on Health Protection insisted that a woman's right to choose where she has an abortion — be that at a private or state-run medical facility — should be preserved, according to the newspaper.
Dec 15, 2023
Warsaw (AFP) – Russia's radical conservative turn since it invaded Ukraine is changing life inside the country, with even the long-held right for women to have abortions being questioned.
Russia has a decades-old tradition of legal abortions, with the issue less divisive as in many more religious Western countries. But over the last few months a flurry of regions have rushed to restrict abortions in private clinics, yielding to demands from the Russian Orthodox church.
BY ILONA GERSH
The Militant, Vol. 87/No. 46
December 2, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin is leading a drive to severely restrict women’s right to get an abortion in Russia, which in recent history has a relatively high abortion rate, an annual average of 46 per 1,000 women. At the same time, his government is seeking to limit aid to Russian families, as the pressures from Moscow’s genocidal war against the people of Ukraine is hitting increasingly hard on working people.
Putin and his cronies are dismayed by the plummeting birthrate in Russia. The rate of population decline has almost tripled since 2020. His war against Ukraine has so far resulted in a death toll of some 120,000 Russian soldiers, with 180,000 more wounded. Close to 1 million youth have left the country since the beginning of the war, seeking to avoid the draft and Putin’s deepening assault on political rights.
Continued: https://themilitant.com/2023/12/02/putin-moves-to-abolish-womens-right-to-abortion-in-russia/
Experts say crackdown on abortion drugs and services is part of a project to instil ‘certain values’ in society.
By Katie Marie Davies
28 Nov 2023
Russia has long touted itself as a country home to what President Vladimir Putin often calls “traditional family values”. The Federal Assembly has cracked down on the LGBTQ community, passing legislation outlawing gender-affirming surgeries and banning “gay propaganda”.
Now social conservatives have a new target: reproductive rights. Terminating a pregnancy is a legal and widely available procedure in Russia, but in recent weeks and months, a flurry of new laws appear to limit abortion access amid fears of further population declines and a push towards conservatism.
Katie Balevic
Nov 25, 2023
Top Russian authorities are restricting abortion access, calling the procedure a "disaster."
It comes amid the state's concerns over population growth, particularly where it impacts military recruiting, according to the BBC. Some one in three women claim to have gotten the procedure, and more than 500,000 pregnancies were terminated in 2022, the outlet reported.
Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-authorities-are-restricting-abortion-access-2023-11
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