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‘Like something from the Middle Ages’ Russia may stop short of a total ban, but its anti-abortion turn has just begun

Source: Meduza

In recent months, the Russian authorities have begun experimenting with new restrictions on reproductive healthcare in some regions, including limits on abortion services in private clinics and bans on “coercing” women into having abortions that stretch the definition of the word “coercion” beyond any reasonable interpretation. Meduza has learned from sources close to the Kremlin that while internal polling indicates that most Russians oppose the idea of a total abortion ban, lawmakers are likely to continue piling on new restrictions thanks to the Russian Orthodox Church and other conservative figures who currently have the president’s ear. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev explains.

In the fall of 2023, the Russian authorities began a major campaign to restrict abortion rights in the country. In November, private clinics in five of Russia’s regions (Tatarstan, Mordovia, and the Lipetsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kursk regions) restricted abortion services at the same time, as did private facilities in Russian-annexed Crimea.

Additionally, local authorities in four regions (the Kaliningrad, Kursk, and Tver regions and Mordovia) made it a misdemeanor offense to “coerce” women into getting an abortion. An explanatory note attached to the bills before their passage said, among other things, that “the cult of consumerism, aggressive demands for self-actualization, and the mockery of family values in conjunction with the cult of sex imposes on women the view that abortion is the necessary choice for a modern person.”

The phenomenon hasn’t been limited to Russia’s regions; federal officials have long been discussing the need for national abortion restrictions. In late November, Russian State Duma Deputy Chair Anna Kuznetsova (who previously served as the country’s children’s rights commissioner, and who has close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church) announced that the parliament is preparing a bill to ban abortions in private clinics throughout the country. Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko recently said the authorities want to ensure that abortions are only performed in Russia when medically necessary or in cases of “some kind of violence against women.” At the same time, she maintained that the government has no intention of passing a wholesale ban on abortion, saying “the state definitely won’t go down [this] path.”

According to a source close to the Kremlin and another close to the State Duma’s leadership who spoke to Meduza, the Russian authorities are indeed not currently planning on banning abortion fully. A source close to the Putin administration added that the country’s leaders are planning “lighter” regulations (such as a nationwide ban on abortions in private clinics): “Getting an abortion will be possible but more difficult.” The authorities are counting on these measures supporting their “traditional values” messaging and increasing birth rates. (Meduza has previously reported on how abortion restrictions actually tend to have the opposite effect.)

All of Meduza’s sources close to the Russian authorities agreed that the campaign to restrict abortion rights is happening at the initiative of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the circle of “conservatives” who currently enjoy “influence over the president.” (The sources named Konstantin Malofeev, the ultraconservative oligarch behind the Russian Orthodox TV station Tsargrad, as one example.)

“He [Putin] is a conservative right now; that’s the reality. He’s not currently ready to go as extreme as some, but he does seem likely to follow [the ROC] on some measures. Just on a smaller scale: not banning abortions, but making it significantly more difficult to get them,” said a source close to the Kremlin.

In 2022, ROC head Patriarch Kirill called on the Russian authorities to ban abortions in private clinics, and he recently repeated the request in a statement to the State Duma. He has also called for a federal ban on “coercing” women into getting abortions and has referred to the procedure itself as a “mockery of the idea of human rights” and a “national disaster.”

In late November 2023, Vladimir Putin gave a speech to the World Russian People’s Council, an influential organization led by the ROC, that hinted at the growing sway conservative ideas have over him. In particular, the president said that having numerous children should “become the norm for all of Russia’s people.” He didn’t directly mention abortion in the speech, but he said in an earlier speech to the Russian Civic Chamber that abortion is an “urgent problem.” According to Meduza’s sources, it was the Putin administration who sent the “recommendations” to regional governors that they restrict abortions in private clinics.

A source close to the State Duma added that the first restrictions on abortions in private clinics are being imposed in regions whose governors are alumni of the Kremlin’s “school for governors” — a Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) program for training a personnel reserve — such as Lipetsk Governor Igor Artamonov and Chelyabinsk Governor Alexey Teksler. “These people are quick to sense which way the wind is blowing. When [the Putin administration] says jump, they ask ‘how high?’” the source said.

According to a source close to the Kremlin, the Putin administration believes the majority of Russians oppose the idea of a total abortion ban; results from closed polls commissioned by the authorities have shown as much. Public survey data supports this belief: according to the Public Opinion Foundation, 65 percent of Russians oppose the idea of a full abortion ban, while about 25 percent believe abortions should be permitted in all cases.

One of Meduza’s sources close to the Russian authorities said that even the idea of banning abortions only in private clinics “is met with rejection” by the Kremlin’s skeptics and supporters alike: “For them, this is all a disaster, something from the Middle Ages. Even high-profile officials are shocked. They don’t like this, and they’ve made it clear.”

A political strategist who spoke to Meduza said that in his view, the authorities are unlikely to impose harsh nationwide restrictions before the upcoming presidential elections, which are scheduled for March 2024. “Why send that signal to [women who support Putin]?” he explained. At the same time, he didn’t rule out further regional restrictions, reasoning that local authorities may want to get in line with the “overall conservative trend.”

According to sources close to the Russian authorities, one of the most likely scenarios appears to be a “hybrid option,” in which getting abortions in private clinics becomes extremely difficult while state clinics simultaneously start “insistently discouraging people from having abortions.” Russian gynecologists have already begun holding “pre-abortion consultations” with women at the request of the Health Ministry, which hopes the measure will “give women a sense of the importance of carrying a pregnancy to term.” Policies requiring doctors to discourage women from getting abortions are currently being tested in several pilot regions. The authorities’ instructions don’t recommend doctors tell women they’re making the wrong decision by getting an abortion but instead tell them to emphasize the “positive sides of pregnancy and raising a child”: “It’s great to be a mother!”

Meduza’s sources did not rule out the possibility that the Russian authorities will gradually intensify their efforts to dissuade women from seeking abortions; for example, they could instruct doctors to tell women that “abortion is murder.” The sources also speculated that the federal authorities could expand a policy adopted in the Belgorod region in the early 2010s that requires women seeking abortions to visit a psychologist and a priest and have them sign a form “approving” the procedure. Federal Health Ministry rules do require doctors to send women seeking abortions to a psychologist for a consultation, but it’s currently easy for women to disregard the requirement.

Sources close to the Kremlin said the authorities find the Belgorod experiment “interesting” but said the federal government is unlikely to ever involve priests in its pre-abortion requirements.