Authors

Discussion

This presentation addresses one the dimensions of the contemporary Russian pronatalist policy: anti-abortion measures introduced since 2006, and most importantly between 2011 and 2016. The Russian legislation still guarantees the right to on demand abortion, but more and more obstacles have been introduced, including: a waiting period (2 to 7 days); pre-abortion counseling conducted by gynecologists, psychologists, or orthodox priests; an ultrasound, during which abortion seekers must listen to fetal heartbeat; “informed consent forms” containing biased information on the harms of abortion. According to a decree, the policy target of pre-abortion counseling is a 15% renunciation rate (15% of abortion seekers gave birth instead).

This presentation analyses the content of this anti-abortion policy, and its sources of inspiration. Given the impossibility do conduct fieldwork in Russia, it is based on three types of empirical sources that are available online: the legislation and the Ministry of Health’s official recommendations; abortion statistics; the Russian scientific literature on pre-abortion counseling (a corpus of 65 articles published between 2011 and 2023, mostly written by the professionals in charge of the implementation of this policy, i.e. psychologists and health professionals).

This presentation shows that on the one hand, many features of this policy were first elaborated in the context of the US so-called “right-to-know policies”, and then selectively imported by Russia. They consist in forcing abortions seekers to receive biased and pseudo-scientific “information” on the harm of abortion and on fetal development. In both countries, Christian activists are key actors of policy making. On the other hand, some features of this policy are specific to Russia, in particular: the 15% renunciation rate policy target; the focus on providing abortion seekers information on pronatalist welfare measures.