Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 29 – In another example of Putin’s desire to shift responsibility for unpopular steps away from himself, the Kremlin leader has not backed a ban on abortion at the all-Russian level lest any such ban spark protests at home and offend many people in other countries.
Instead, he has backed moves in 23 federal subjects to prohibit “propaganda” supporting abortions, a lightly veiled means of frightening anyone who might conduct or seek such an operation; and his officials have lifted the licenses of clinics and hospitals in many places so that women who can’t get the operation near their homes are forced to travel enormous distances.
The Transbaikal Kray is a case in point. Last winter, it adopted a law against “propagandizing” abortions, and in the months since, officials have lifted the licenses to conduct abortions of most clinics and hospitals outside the federal subject’s capital. That is no small thing, given that the kray is almost the size of Sweden.
Women there who want an abortion must either travel hundreds of kilometers from their homes to Chita or go to a neighboring oblast where abortions are still relatively available. And that often causes delays which mean that they come to the hospitals doing abortions after the time that it is legally permissible for them to do so.
What makes this all so sad is that Putin isn’t held accountable for this approach to denying abortions and also the fact that independent analysts have concluded that banning abortions does little or nothing to boost the birthrate, something which is at the center of what the Kremlin leader is pleased to call his “demographic policy.”
On Putin’s sleight of hand in this area, something that allows him to effectively ban abortions without appearing to do so, and on why such moves are infuriating many women and their families, see sibreal.org/a/gosudarstvo-skazalo-rozhay-rossiyskie-bolnitsy-prekraschayut-delat-aborty-pod-davleniem-minzdrava/33573962.html.
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