Russia: New law restricts abortion

President Dmitri A. Medvedev has signed into law the first steps intended to restrict abortion since the collapse of communism, the New York Times reports.

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. 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 this week, the New York Times reports. A summary of the changes, posted on the Kremlin’s Web site, said that 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. But 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. more on >>

Source: http://www.abortionreview.org