Abortion Tourism on the Rise in Russia with Regions Where Abortions are Restricted Now Surrounded by Those where Abortions have Increased in Number, Sakevich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Abortion tourism, widely known in the United States, is now on the rise in Russia, leading to a situation in which those federal subjects which have restricted access to abortions are increasingly surrounded byregions where the number of abortions have risen, according to Viktoria Sakevich.

            The Higher School of Economics demographer says that it is thus very unlikely that restricting abortions region by region as the Putin regime has been doing will have the demographic consequences the Kremlin wants (“Abortion Policy and Abortion Prevalence Globally and in Russia” (in Russian), Demografichekoye obozreniye 2026 13: 3: 4-28.)

            The leaders of regions where abortions have gone up and thus their own standing with the Kremlin has gone down routinely complain about this development, but even were Moscow to ban abortions  for the country as a whole, that would not depress their number as much as many assume.

            Instead, in that event, Russia women would either travel abroad to get thisprocedure if they could afford to, Sakevich says; or, as the experience of other countries shows, they will turn to illegal providers with horrific consequences for the women, their children, and Russian society as a whole.