Bostonia knows

Medvedev OKs law warning of abortion health risks

July 15, 2011|David Nowak, Associated Press

Russia has for the first time (incorrect, several restrictions had been imposed since 1993) placed regulations on the largely unrestricted practice of abortion, requiring clinics to warn potential clients of the purported health hazards of the procedure.

A new law signed Thursday by President Dmitry Medvedev is seen by some observers as possibly the first in a series of new rules governing abortion.

Russia has among the highest abortion rates in the world, a major contributor to a worrying population decline (absolutely stupid!) that the Kremlin is under massive pressure to stop.

Free abortion is available at any licensed medical clinic in the country and at any term in the pregnancy (wow! only for bears;), though late termination is only permitted on grounds of severe health risks to the mother or fetal abnormalities.

That liberal policy was instituted in the Soviet era when pregnancy termination was practically the only form of birth control (myth) and condoms were unreliable, of poor quality and seldom used (incorrectly, as well as other methods). That policy is now coming under serious attack for the first time by increasingly vocal conservatives backed by the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, which is pushing for an outright ban on abortion.

The debate in Russia hasn’t achieved the ubiquity and fierceness of the United States, but it’s unlikely to recede, given the influence of the Church (no prove for that) and the fact that deaths exceed births in this country (nothing to do with abortions).

The issue has remained on the agenda, despite lawmakers in June recalling a Church-proposed bill seeking a ban on free abortions at government-run clinics and the prohibition of the sale of the morning-after pill without a prescription.

According to a United Nations survey in 2004, Russia had the world’s highest abortion rate: 53.7 per 100 women. (34.2 per 1000! in 2009)

Figures from the Russian Health Ministry suggest the rate may have declined in recent years, though it remains high: In 2009, there were 74 abortions for every 100 births in Russia, a significant drop in comparison with 169 abortions per 100 births in 2000 (or 206 in 1990).

The total number of abortions recorded by the Health Ministry (Rosstat in fact) in 2009 reached nearly 1.3 million.

The Russian population, which currently stands at 143 million, has shrunk by about 5.7 million since the fall of the Soviet Union in a plunge also blamed on rampant alcoholism, bad diets and lack of exercise.

The Kremlin on its website didn’t mention demographics in its explanation of the law, which forces clinics to devote 10 percent of any advertising space to warnings, justifying the move only in terms of “protecting the health of the woman’’ against the possible risks.

But Medvedev has made redressing the birth-death ratio one of the key goals of his presidency, and his wife, Svetlana, is a noted pro-life (antichoice!) proponent.

Abortion: Choice or Crime?

Russia Today:

I need a transcript of this clip, since it contains incorrect info (imho)
can not see the video, go to YuoTube

Russia Enacts Law Opposing Abortion

By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev has signed into law the first steps [actually they are not first, see previous] intended to restrict abortion since the collapse of communism, the latest salvo in what is beginning to resemble the fierce divide over abortion in the United States.

The changes require abortion providers to devote 10 percent of any advertising to describing the dangers of abortion to a woman’s health, and they make it illegal to describe abortion as a safe medical procedure [i.e., providers are made to lie their patients].

Tighter restrictions on abortion may follow after Parliament considers a separate health bill in the autumn.

The changes were passed by the upper house of Parliament this month as an amendment to the law governing advertising and were signed by Mr. Medvedev on Monday. A summary of the changes, which take effect within 30 days, was posted Thursday on the Kremlin’s Web site, which reproduces reams of documents on all of Mr. Medvedev’s legislative measures but highlights only some.

The summary on the Web site said the new law “is directed on the whole towards protecting women’s health and makes it mandatory for advertising of medical services on the artificial termination of pregnancy to include warnings on the danger of this procedure for women’s health and the possible harmful consequences, including infertility.”

In Soviet times, abortion was free and unrestricted after the late 1960s [1920-1936, and since 1955]. But in recent years, contention over abortion has begun to sound like the debate in the United States.

Mr. Medvedev has made the fight against Russia’s falling birthrate and plunging population, now at just under 143 million, a feature of his presidency, offering incentives like payouts for a third child and land plots to encourage women to give birth.

Official statistics placed the number of abortions at 1.3 million in 2009, a significant drop from the 1990s. Russia’s increasingly vocal anti-abortion activists, some in Parliament, say it is perhaps many times higher, and Mr. Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana Medvedeva, has taken up the cause. (!!!)

Last Friday, her Foundation for Social and Cultural Initiatives launched a nationwide campaign, “Give Me Life!” which it advertised on its Web site and in brochures and other materials as a “week against abortion.”

One brochure distributed by the foundation warns that “the consequences of a thoughtless step can ruin one’s life” and offered graphic descriptions of what it called the health threat posed by abortion, chiefly in upsetting hormones in a way that could lead to cancer.

Several local governments, including Murmansk, in the north, and Tula, just south of Moscow, supported the campaign, and state-run medical centers offered families and single women consultations to avoid abortion and lift the birthrate.

The campaign was tied into the “Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness,” a holiday created by Mrs. Medvedeva and the Russian Orthodox Church and centered around Pyotr and Fevronia, a couple who ruled the Murom region northeast of Moscow in the late 12th century and were later declared saints. The president and his wife went to Murom to extol family values and encourage childbirth.

Meanwhile, Valery Draganov, a member of Parliament from United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, reintroduced a legislative package for consideration in the lower house that would place strict limits on abortion.

Officials of the Russian Orthodox Church had complained that members of Parliament who support a right to abortion had scuttled amendments to a health bill that would have imposed a waiting period. Voting on that bill, which raises a number of other medical issues that have caused an outcry in Russia, has been postponed until autumn.

Sensing a threat, Russian abortion-rights activists [why not prochicers?], who include feminists, doctors and demographers, have held seminars for journalists and even a small protest in [Moscow and] St. Petersburg. Boris Denisov, a Moscow State University demographer working to create a pro-choice coalition [actually it has been created about a year ago, but slept a whole infancy], said, “Since obscurantists cannot turn history back, they limit themselves to small meanness like a week without abortion.” [+ At a population level it is unnoticed, but it could cripple life of any single woman or couple.]

The Rev. Maksim Obukhov, a Russian Orthodox priest campaigning against abortion since the 1990s, when he was a lone voice, insists that more and more Russians favor restrictions.

A conference last month in Moscow brought together abortion opponents from Russia, the United States and Eastern Europe. It also resulted in a declaration condemning what it called other “social deviations” including “refusal of marriage and childbearing.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Russia Enacts Law Opposing Abortion.

see NYT site for original txt

A short overview about new developments

"On July 05 Mizulina`s Group has introduced a set of amendments to Basic Health Care Law without registering them at Secretariat. However, the Duma Health Committee rejected all of them with the only one exception. They took "48 hours of silence" for the group of "prima gravida" and included it into recommended Amendments to the Basic Law.

It was initially planned to have July 8 a Second Reading of this Law, but due to severe comments coming from the health professionals and experts from economic field, the Second Reading is now postponed until the Autumn Parliament` Session.

Mizulina`s colleagues are unhappy that the health profile Committee rejected their proposals, on the other hand they are very enthusiastic for introduction of the 48 hours of abortion delay for the first pregnancy termination! Now they are thrilled that the current Law on abortion is not made with stone and could be changed at the end! Their new Strategy is: to reformulate their proposal and to consequently register it at the Governmental Duma as a specific Law.

In addition to those recent news, today we have received a press-release from the MoHSD. It is very disappointing...The document is prepared on purpose of Second Readings of the Basic Law .It seems that the author is MoHSD employee - the Deputy Head of the Mother and Child Health Department in parallel the member of Mizulina` Group - prof. Oleg Filippov. The press-release is stating that abortion " is a disabling\harmful procedure" and that there is a need for psychological and social support for the "crisis pregnancy" as well as for the "post-abortion syndrome" which need psycho-social support and counseling. For those purposes the Ministry (this idea seconds the proposals from the Moscow Demographic anti-choice Forum!) is organizing specialized Centres (based on the Women`s Consultations and Family Planning facilities) to pursue (and not to force!) women to continue unwanted pregnancy and give birth."

Dr. Lyubov Erofeeva MD, MPH
RAPD General Director

The recently signed memorandum of cooperation between MoHSD and the Church (in brief + link to full text in coments, in Russian)

I suppose we should make an international pro choice coalition, I started to do in FB