Moscow Anti Choice Rally, June 5, 2011

I attended that rally. My impressions are here (in Russian): #1, #2, and #3.

The greatest surprise is support for antichoicers arrived from Putin's party Unified Russia, and lack of visible support from Russian Orthodox Church. Ruslan Kuznetsov (UR) speaks for life from conception (photo).

Recent news about the fate of anti-abortion initiatives prepared by former Russian family planning association (now Population and Development):

The fact is that the pro-kremlin MP Valeriy Draganov (a very religious person!) has registered his proposal on June 1, but in an hour time disregarded it! His own explanations why did he introduced his draft (being representative of a different Committee) were very unclear and of such a sort, like that population at his territory was pushing him to regulate abortions, as well as several members from Mizulina` Committee send him an official letter to support and fasten their initiative with the measures towards abortions reduction.

Since these days a Basic Law on Health-care passed through the First Readings, there is a need to correspond to it. Thus Mizulina and her colleagues did not register their Amandements yet, they will change their proposal in order to "fill in" the mentioned Basic Law in the part of abortions. Mizulina was just furious mentioning that she trusts her working Group members and could not think that there was "a leakage" of the document to the press and stipulated that Valeriy Draganov "opened" one of the previous versions of the draft that the Working Group has prepared. The importance of the proposal is socially high and Mizulina is planning not to foster their proposal, she mentioned also that there is a need to listen to the "voice of the society". The Group will meet in June once again and will develop their new tactics towards their battle with abortions.

Seems that we can have a short breath now since none of the Drafts is registered at the Governmental Duma. But there is a vital necessity to put as much blocks to it as possible.