Paul Goble
Staunton, May 14 – There are many reasons why Moscow’s reports on the number of abortions are problematic: The government keeps changing reporting requirements; private clinics don’t provide complete data; and in particular, as in Soviet times, the authorities count miscarriages as abortions.
As a result, Russian data on abortions are not comparable over time or with data sets from most other countries, according to Aby Shukyurov and Ilya Klimkin, two demographers writing on the To Be Precise portal (tochno.st/materials/skolko-abortov-delaiut-v-rossii-oficialno-468-tysiac-v-god-no-est-niuansy-razbiraemsia-kak-ustroena-eta-statistika).
The Soviet Union was the world leader in abortions primarily because other forms of family planning were not available, they say; and it is certainly the case that the number of abortions in the Russian Federation has fallen dramatically since 1991. But specifying exactly how large the decline has been is impossible.
In 2023, Rosstat reported that the number of abortions had declined to 468,000; but that figure may overstate the number by as much s 20 percent because it still includes miscarriages while understating it because of under-reporting by private clinics and the lack of any good way to specify the number of illegal abortions.
According to the two demographers, private clinics now carry out 20 percent of all abortions in the Russian Federation “but to calculate them exactly is impossible,” given the uncertainties of reporting. Moreover, the number of illegal abortions may be on the rise given restrictions on offering abortions in state clinics and their ban in 20 percent of private clinics.
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