The MP's call to ban abortions in private clinics sparked a heated debate
Russian State Duma deputy from A Just Russia Dmitry Gusev proposes to exclude abortions from the services of private clinics.
A bill on this may be submitted to parliament in the near future, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The demographic situation in our country is catastrophic. In January-August 2023, the number of births decreased by 2,6%, and at the end of the whole year, the birth rate is expected to decline by 4,6%. For simple reproduction of the Russian population, the coefficient must be significantly higher and be 2,15, at a minimum, and in 2024 it will be 1,32,” Gusev said.
His proposal caused a debate among deputies. The chairman of the health protection committee, Svetlana Davydova, believes that the exclusion of abortion at will from the compulsory medical insurance system could lead to the criminalization of this area.
“Whether the family wants to expand or not is their decision. Therefore, we do not need to go to such extreme measures. By closing one, we can open Pandora’s box: the criminal part of medical abortions,” Davydova said.
Communist Nina Ostanina agrees with her.
“We are dooming young people to not having children and having clandestine abortions, while the state pretends that it cares about demography. Deputies who are foaming at the mouth when they say that students should give birth should think about who will support these children,” Ostanina said.
She recalled that if 5 billion rubles were previously allocated for young families, then next year only 4 billion were allocated. Ostanina is also dissatisfied with the government’s proposal to reduce the allocation of maternity capital funds by 130 billion rubles.
Deputy Biysultan Khamzaev proposed solving the problem by the state “buying” children from women planning to have an abortion. According to him, this will help save thousands of lives, and “buying and raising a child in normal and comfortable conditions is the country’s maternal mission.”
Former deputy chairman of the Public Council under the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Pavel Pozhigailo, believes that no benefits will fundamentally solve the issue of fertility, and abortion is already de facto criminalized.
“Banning private abortion clinics will result in at least 160 births plus (000% of the number of abortions). And ban the export of abortion materials. A three-month-old aborted child in the West costs 10 euros, in Russia 25. There is a huge business in killing babies,” Pozhigailo wrote in his tg channel.
While discussions are ongoing in the State Duma, regional authorities have already begun to take the initiative. The Ministry of Health of Crimea reported that it is no longer possible to perform abortions in private clinics on the peninsula. Clinics refused to provide such services voluntarily.
Soon the Kursk region joined Crimea. There, four out of five clinics abandoned chemical abortions.
Previously, in Tatarstan, a third of private clinics refused to perform abortions; in the Chelyabinsk region, several private medical institutions announced their refusal to perform surgical termination of pregnancy. Mordovia and the Tver region have adopted regional laws banning inducement to abortion; violations are subject to administrative liability.
Communist deputy Alexei Kurinny believes that regional initiatives contradict federal legislation.
“Private clinics rarely operate under compulsory medical insurance. And in a separate region, introduce additional restrictions - while regional authorities do not have such rights. A ban on abortion in private clinics will not affect the demographic situation in any way. Therefore, I do not support such a decision,” Kurinny said on the radio station “Moscow Speaks”.
“The idea of removing abortions without medical indications from compulsory medical insurance is understandable and reasonable. If you get pregnant and don’t want to give birth simply because you don’t want to, pay. But the idea of banning them in private clinics is some kind of cringe. As a result, the abortion burden on state clinics will increase, and since their resource after all the “optimizations,” to put it mildly, is not unlimited, giving birth in a state clinic will become more difficult, and you will have to fork out more for giving birth in a private clinic. All this, of course, will not increase the desire to give birth,” says national democrat and Sovietologist Yegor Ershov.
Journalist Yulia Vityazeva drew an unexpected parallel between the ban on abortion and the absence of crosses in various images of churches.
“All this is already turning into schizophrenia and cave obscurantism. Men who do not even know such a concept as PMS, in crude form, demand a ban on abortion. Moral looters write statements to the Investigative Committee, demanding the involvement of anyone and everyone who allows themselves to draw a picture of a temple without a cross. Behind these cries and demands are, in the first case, millions of broken women’s destinies, and in the second, the threat of a rollback to the era of the first wheel,” Vityazeva wrote.
Her post caused outrage among Orthodox publicist Yegor Kholmogorov.
“What’s great here is that the two topics are interconnected. This is how it should be understood. For infanticide (so-called abortion) - that means for ensuring that there are no crosses on churches. Against crosses means for infanticide. Complete Noviopic satanic harmony,” he wrote.
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