Openly defending one’s decision not to have children will be prosecuted in Russia. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is preparing a bill under which authorities will impose fines of up to 50,000 euros for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life, from casual conversation to the creation of films and books, and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement.
The persecution of what the Kremlin calls a “movement childfree”(without children, in English) will entail fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (about 4,000 euros), 800,000 rubles for civil servants (8,000 euros), and up to five million rubles (50,000 euros) for companies or other legal entities. In addition, foreigners will be deported.
There are thousands of reasons why a woman or a man decides not to have children, but the Cabinet of Ministers has asked Parliament to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also points to a supposed massive and organised movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of some communities on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely reach 5,000 subscribers.
“We have begun to consider a bill that will ban propaganda of conscious refusal to have children,” announced the speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, via his Telegram channel. “Posts and social networks often disrespect motherhood and fatherhood, attack pregnant women and children, as well as members of large families,” added the politician, a staunch defender of a war, that of Ukraine, which has left tens of thousands of Russian households without parents and children.
“Everything that interferes with the growth of the birth rate must be eliminated from our lives,” said the spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov. However, he does not envisage Moscow joining the peace talks promoted by Ukraine. “For us, there is no alternative to our goals. As soon as these goals are achieved in one way or another, the special military operation will end.”
President Vladimir Putin said in early September that his government must create the conditions “so that having many children becomes fashionable again, as it used to be – seven or ten people in a family.”
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Even though Putin is about to complete a quarter of a century in power, Russia, with 146 million inhabitants, has been suffering from a demographic decline since the 20th century, which war, the inverted generational pyramid and its internal policies have further aggravated. Last year, 1.3 million people died and 1.26 million children were born, the lowest figure since the fall of the USSR, with the exception of 1999 due to the fateful ruble crisis. In addition, the tightening of policies against foreigners has caused them to flee: the number of registered immigrants has fallen from 8.5 to 6.1 million in the last year.
In 2007, Putin approved a maternity support programme that today pays 466,617 rubles for the first child (4,600 euros), plus 150,000 rubles (1,460 euros) for the second. However, this project has not boosted pregnancies in a country where only a tenth of the population is over 18. mileurismand a man earns ten times more for going to the front for a year.
Meanwhile, the State Duma is also considering a bill introduced at the end of last year to ban abortions in private clinics. At least 11 regions have taken this step individually, but the government has called for a “significant review” of the reform because it believes that it will increase public spending and may increase maternal mortality due to the use of clandestine operations. In addition, deputies are also discussing reducing the deadline for abortion from 12 to 9 weeks.
First it was the LGTBI community, then feminism, then…
The Duma speaker has said that the authorities will ban “propaganda of not having children” on the “internet, media, films and advertising.” However, the precedent of other Kremlin legislation against freedom of expression, such as the law against the discrediting of the armed forces or the law against LGBT propaganda, as well as the declaration of the “LGBT movement” as extremist, leaves open the possibility of being recorded in a private conversation and subsequently reported.
“By analogy, these [medidas] “These have been previously adopted against LGBT propaganda and gender reassignment,” Volodin said. Russia has banned sex change for trans people since last year, contrary to World Health Organisation criteria, including the identity on the passport itself.
The ban on arguing that one does not want children is a further step in the Kremlin’s deep ideologisation of the Russian state under its alleged “defence of traditional values”. Russian authorities accuse the West of being behind any liberal thought, even when it comes to universal human rights, and with this argument they repress any internal dissent that defends a different Russia.
“I once said that we should ban the childless movement by law because this is a foreign project, it is a hostile project,” said the chairwoman of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Federation, Valentina Matvienko, last week. “They are instilling in women’s brains, using the most modern technologies, that they should give up motherhood,” the senator said.
No voices in favour of the personal choice not to have children will be heard in the debate on the law. Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov said in June that the government would promote such initiatives “to protect the values of the Russian people”, while the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Valery Fadeyev, said last year that “LGBTQ people, radical feminism, radical environmentalism and the right to privacy are all in favour of the law”. childfreedominate in the West.”
“Those who do not accept this ideology are declared enemies of freedom and supporters of tyranny,” added Fadeyev, who accused the West of “distorting” universal rights “in order to interfere in the internal affairs of states” while his country proscribes with prison or blacklists, such as that of foreign agents, citizens who do not follow the dictates of the state. “I call this ideology the ideology of death, the destruction of the family,” said the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights.
In fact, the space for debate in Russia is shrinking. The Duma announced another legal reform on Tuesday, which will punish with up to two years in prison those who, via the Internet or the media, “disrespect the honour or dignity of a government employee in terms of his personal or professional qualities.”
These will probably not be the last measures of the Russian authorities, who are obsessed with defending “traditional values”, despite being regularly involved in scandals. This month alone, two scandals have come to light: the recordings of a deputy with a prostitute inside the Duma itself this weekend and the surprise wedding in early September between Russia’s children’s ombudsman and the owner of the ultra-Orthodox television channel Tsargrad, two defenders of tradition who were in couples and had large families until just a few months ago.
