Russia may ban abortions in private clinics

The Ministry of Health is ready to discuss the ban on abortion in commercial clinics, said the head of the department Mikhail Murashko, Interfax reports.

“Reducing abortion is a key issue we are working on. The number of abortions has decreased significantly in recent years, but there is still a reserve <...> The topic of prioritizing abortion in state institutions, in my opinion, deserves attention, ”said the minister at a meeting of the State Duma.

According to Muraszka, supervisory authorities identified cases where private clinics could not withstand a “quiet week” before the appropriate operation. By law, if the gestational age is less than 11 weeks, it is forbidden to have an abortion within seven days after contacting the medical facility.

The initiative to exclude such operations from the list of services offered by commercial clinics was supported by the deputy speaker of the State Duma, a member of the faction “United Russia” by Anna Kuznetsova. In her opinion, this is necessary to stimulate natural growth in the country. Kuznetsova noted that “regions where there is not a single private clinic with an abortion license are leaders in natural population growth.”

According to statistics, the least interruptions in pregnancy occur in the Muslim Caucasus: Ingushetia, Dagestan, Chechnya, Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. In the same subjects of the federation, the highest birth rate in the country. However, in the ranking of the quality of life, these regions occupy one of the lowest places. It’s pretty hard to get an abortion there, even underground.

the day before Muraszko proposed limiting the sale of drugs for medical termination of pregnancy. The Ministry of Health plans to transfer them to quantitative accounting by the end of 2023. The minister said that the draft regulation had already received comments from the federal executive authorities. Murashko also called “wrong practice” withthe willingness of women to build a career and get an education, postponing the birth of children for a later period.

The demographic situation in the country continues to deteriorate rapidly against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. According to Rosstat, in 2022 the number of children born in Russia decreased by 96,000. to 1.306 million and became the lowest since 2001. Throughout the country, the birth rate turned out to be 1.5 times lower than the death rate (1.905 million), while in some regions the difference turned out to be twice as large.

In the period January-May 2023, the number of births fell by another 11.5 thousand, to 511.7 thousand, and the relative birth rate of 8.5 children per 1,000 population fell to the “bottom” from the late 1990s.