Abortion Laws: A Russian Case Study
By Karen Young

Over the past hundred years Russians have been subjected to fluctuating abortion laws – from legalization to decriminalization.  Looking at the various trends behind the governments flux in ideals on the issue of abortion is insightful and can lend us a fascinating glimpse into the real motivations behind abortion laws in other parts of the world.

A Brief History of Abortion in Russia
 
November of 1920 - Abortion was first legalized in Russia.
1924 - “new regulations introduced a high fee for induced abortions performed in state hospitals and established special commissions to limit free abortions in state hospitals.”1
1924 – privatized ‘hospitals for abortions only’called abortarium’s were beginning to be established.2
1935 – laws were implemented which “forbade termination of the first pregnancy except for medical reasons, within the first trimester of pregnancy or if the interval since the last induced abortion was less than six months.”3
June 1936 – it become a criminal act to have or perform an induced abortion except if the health of the mother was in severe jeopardy “or if there was a likelihood of inherited disease.”4
1954 – the punishment for having an illegal abortion was abolished.
November 1955 – “abortions were permitted if done by qualified personnel in medical facilities.”5  However, abortions were restricted to the “first 12 weeks of gestation, although not less than six months after a woman’s previous abortion.”6  If an abortion was not done within the parameters of these strict regulations the offending parties could end up in a Russian labour camp for up to eight years.7
1955 – 1982 – Many Russian women who did not have access to abortion opted to have illegal abortions.  30 – 40% of abortions during this time period were illegally performed.
1970 – “there were 1.9 million births and 4.8 million abortions.”8
1974 – the government of Russia banned the use of oral contraceptives.
1982 -  Concerned about the number of illegal abortions, the restrictions were lessoned and abortions were allowed up until 28 weeks if the health of the women was in jeopardy.
1988 – the abortion laws were again extended so that all women could obtain an abortion during the first trimester and if it was deemed medically necessary or if the women had been raped or recently divorced, abortions would be allowed throughout the second trimester.9
1988 – the regulations for abortion were broadened to include a longer list of medical and social reasons women could obtain abortions.
1990 – 3.9 million induced abortions were reported in the Russian Federation.10
1994 – Russian women started turning away from abortion as the main method of contraception and the annual abortion rate dropped from 4 million to 3.5 million.11
1995 - “55% of known pregnancies [were] terminated by abortion … [and] the level of induced abortion [was] higher in the former USSR than in any other country in the world.  It [was] not uncommon for a Soviet woman to have four or five abortions and a few woman to have as many as twenty.”12
1996 – the list of indications for the allowance of abortion on social grounds after the first 12 weeks was broadened to allow for six new circumstances, including the disability of the husband and unemployment.  The definition for the prohibition on abortion was also changed in the criminal code, so that an abortion was only considered illegal if performed by someone without the proper qualifications.13
2004 –1.6 million Russian women had abortions and according to a Russian Health Official this number does not include the many abortions that go unreported.14

Motivations behind the changing abortion laws in Russia

When trying to understand the motivation behind the Russians ever changing laws and policies on abortion it is important to look at the political movements of the day.  The year 1917 marked a turning point; for, it was in this infamous year that the Bolshevik party took control over the Soviet Union and started to implement its socialist regime.  In the early phases of socialism, the Bolsheviks strongly endorsed the liberation and equality of women which included campaigns and legislation declaring “marriage a civil, not religious, union, and made divorce more or less available on demand”15 as well as the legalization of abortion.          

Abortion was officially legalized in Russia on November 16, 1920, “when the law ‘On artificial interruption of pregnancy’ went into effect abolishing all punishment for induced abortion.”16  Efforts to decriminalize abortion and change the abortion laws in Russia had been underway since 1911.17  When this law came into effect the Russian Health Commission put out a proclamation stating that the reason the government was legislating legal abortion was due to the fact that abortions had drastically increased in the previous ten years and there was a concern that women “became the victims of greedy, unscrupulous charlatans and physicians who made a business out of the secrecy of the operation.”  Statistics were also produced at this time suggesting that four percent of women who underwent abortions died as a direct result and a further fifty percent suffered severe side effects including serious infection.18         
           
When abortion was legalized it can be argued that women’s health was not at the forefront of politicians minds.  In fact, the leader of the Bolshevik party in 1920, Vladimir Lenin made a “statement that no woman should be forced to bear a child against her will.”19  There is also overwhelming evidence to suggest that Russian “authorities believed that the economic crisis from which the USSR suffered, after nearly a decade of unrest, war, revolution, and civil war, made legalized abortion a temporary necessity.”20  Even those who ratified the law legalizing abortion “went on record as saying that abortion was a temporary measure that would become unnecessary as soon as economic conditions improved.”21 
           
Between 1920 and 1924, it is clear that the Soviet government was prepared to follow through with their promises.  In order to protect the health of women seeking abortion, abortions could only be performed by medical doctors and “any person who performed an abortion under other conditions was to be punished by imprisonment.”22  There were also several restrictions included in the 1920 law which included that abortions were not to be approved for first time pregnancies unless the pregnancy was going to seriously hinder the health and well-being of the mother.  Doctors were also forced to turn away women who were more than 10 weeks along in their pregnancy.  For the most part women were admitted into the hospital the night before their abortion and were required to remain in the hospital for at least three days to ensure that any complications could be dealt with prior to the woman’s return to her home. 
           
When the government began to realize in 1924 that it could not financially sustain its own legislation, we find the emergence of new regulations.  These new regulations beyond the introduction of fees for abortion required that women fill out forms stating their own financial situations as well as their reasons for requesting an abortion.  A commission was set up that would approve abortions for women based on a system of preference put in place by the government.  As a result, “women who had one child but were without means of support”23 were given first priority, followed by financially secure women who had many children to care for at home. 
           
It can clearly be argued that these new restrictions to abortion access were not in favour of women, but instead were in the best interests of the Soviet government.  In fact, with these new restrictions women intent on aborting their unborn child who did not qualify under the new government legislation would be forced to seek abortions underground.  According so some historians this is exactly what ended up occurring.  Ironically, the prevention of the illegal abortions was one of the key reasons for the legalization of abortion in 1920.  While the government’s decision to legalize abortion may have been seen by all involved as a means of reducing the number of illegal abortions and preventing harm to women’s health, it is difficult to justify this position in light of the various regulations and restrictions imposed within four years of the new legislation. 
           
In 1924, abortariums were introduced to take care of the overburdened public hospitals. By 1930, there were two such establishments in Moscow alone, each containing two hundred and fifty beds and four operating tables.   According to Taussig, who visited one of the Moscow abortariums in 1930, the hospital was divided according to free and fee paying sections.  In order to obtain a free abortion the woman had to prove she was incapable of affording the procedure.  Incidently, those women who had free abortions received better care and better medical attention than those who had to pay, which clearly demonstrates the governments desire to ‘help’ the economically disadvantaged.
           
Tussig, who observed the daily routine of the doctors and patients in the abortarium commented that he witnessed 57 abortions in the one day he was at the clinic.  He estimated that each procedure from start to finish including the bringing in and taking out of the patient lasted ten minutes and only approximately one precent of women received any kind of anaesthetic.24  When one considers that the womb is one of the most delicate parts of the female anatomy it is amazing to think that an operation to remove a fetus would only take ten minutes.  Thus, it is not surprising that many women suffered severe side effects in the months and years to come.  One Russian physician noted the “growing evidence of serious pelvic disturbances, endocrine dysfunctions, sterility, ectopic pregnancy and other complications following in the wake of artificial abortions.”25  Furthermore, in one Moscow clinic the professor of medicine observed that “one in seven aborted women showed complications such as bleeding, salpingitis or parametritis within ten days following operation.”26  Salpingitis, is the inflamation of the fallopian tubes and parametritis is an inflammatory disease involving the tissues and structure of the walls of the uterus.
           
While efforts were apparently being made to reduce the number of abortions, such as educating woman about contraception, 91 000 abortions were performed in Moscow in the year 1931.27  With this many abortions occurring in a single year, it stands to reason the government would implement further restrictions and eventually outlaw abortions to ensure population growth.  In 1927, statistics from the Ukraine suggest that the “proportion of abortions to births [was] about five to six,”28 which explains the decreased birthrates observed over the same time period.
           
As a result of the huge increase in the number of abortions and women seeking abortion, the government began a campaign to encourage women to keep their babies and in 1936, Stalin declared “that the economic situation in the USSR had changed fundamentally and the Soviet woman now lived in a society free from the need of abortion.”29  Despite these claims, editorials in the Russian newspaper Izvestia, clearly suggest that the economic conditions in Russia had not changed for the better.  Of the letters to the editor reprinted in Sources of Twentieth Century Global History demonstrates that the economics and living conditions in Russia were in crisis.  In one of these letters a female student states that she considered the proposed law to ban abortion as “premature because the housing problem ... is a painful one ... If the draft included an article assuring married couples, who are expecting baby, of a room - that would be a different matter.”30  The problem of housing is reiterated in several other letters to the editor, including one from a professor in Leningrad who commented that “improved housing conditions, legal action against those who fail to pay alimony, etc.”31 would eventually eliminate the need for abortions in Russia. 
           
When Stalin came to power in the 1930’s abortion soon began to be “depicted as a threat to women’s physical well-being, particularly because the practice could lead to infertility in an era when Soviet leaders believed that the state needed an expanding workforce and military.”32  When abortion was finally recriminalized, many regulations were put into place to ensure that the new legislation would be observed.  With the new laws in effect, the government realized that it needed to do something to ensure that women would not resort to illegal means of acquiring an abortion, this campaign included the “expansion of maternity wards ... birth clinics ... financial assistance to women with large families ... the state defined large families as those with seven or more children, with the youngest child under five years of age.  For each child under the age of five, the mother received approximately 2,000 rubles per year until that child reached the age of five.”33 
           
While this shift in focus can be seen as an endeavour to decrease the harm to women, it seems more plausible, based on the economic conditions in Russia and the drastic decreases in population, that Stalin was more concerned about expanding his army and workforce in light of the industrial revolution than he was about the health of women.   In fact, Colin Francome in his book entitled Abortion Freedom, clearly makes the argument that when abortion was recriminalized in 1936, it was against the will of many women throughout Russia, namely because these women feared “they would be condemned to being childbearing machines.”34           
                       
Throughout the rest of the century, the changing abortion laws were toted as measures to ensure the health of women, whether it was to protect women from the dangers of illegally sought abortions or to protect women’s so called physical well-being.  At each of these moments one can find similar arguments for the changing laws as observed between 1920 and 1936.  Women’s health became the official justification for the ever changing attitude on the part of the government towards abortion, but by merely scratching the surface one quickly discovers that the state was motivated by its own needs and desires - whether it be for economic concerns or a need for increased military support and workers.   

Karen Young is the office manager at LifeCanada. 

References

1 Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis Population Division, Abortion Policies: A Global Review: Volume III Oman to Zimbabwe (New York: United Nations, 1995), 55.
2 Frederick J. Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1936), 405.
3 Department for Economic and Social Information, Abortion Policies, 55.
4 Colin Francome, Abortion Freedom (London: George Allen & Unwin Publishers Ltd., 1984), 63.
5 Luke T. Lee, “Brief Survey of Abortion Laws in Five Largest Countreis” in Law and Population Monograph Series 16 (1973), 33.
6 Department for Economic and Social Information, Abortion Policies, 55.
7 Department for Economic and Social Information, Abortion Policies, 55.
8 Anna Arutunyan, Abortion in Russia: No Big Deal (Mosnews.com, November 25, 2004), <http://www.mosnews.com/feature/2004/11/23/abortion.shtml>
9 Abortion: In Law, History and Religion (Toronto: Childbirth by Choice Trust, 1995), 27.
10 Department for Economic and Social Information, Abortion Policies, 56.
11 Abortion: In Law, History and Religion (Toronto: Childbirth by Choice Trust, 1995), 27.
12 Abortion: In Law, History and Religion (Toronto: Childbirth by Choice Trust, 1995), 27.
13 Department for Economic and Social Information, Abortion Policies, 57
14 MosNews.  More Abortions Than Births in Russia — Health Official, (Mosnews, August 23, 2005), <http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/08/23/abortionproblems.shtml> January 25, 2006
15 James H. Overfield, “The Abortion Debate Under Stalin” in Sources of Twentieth-Century Global History (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 139.                                          
16 Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis Population Division, Abortion Policies: A Global Review: Volume III Oman to Zimbabwe (New York: United Nations, 1995), 55.
17 Susan Gross Solomon, “The Soviet Legalization of Abortion in German Medical Discourse: A Study of the Use of Selective Perceptions in Cross-Cultural Scientific Relations,” in Social Studies in Science 22 (1992), 455.
18 Luke T. Lee, “International Status of Abortion Legalization” in Law and Population Monograph Series 16 (1973), 33.
19 Abortion: In Law, History and Religion (Toronto: Childbirth by Choice Trust, 1995), 26.
20 Paula A. Michaels, “Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity: Soviet Kazakstan and the 1936 Abortion Ban,” in Feminist Studies 27 (2001), 307.
21 Soloman,  “The Soviet Legalization of Abortion in German Medical Discourse,” 460.
22 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 406.
23 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 406.
24 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 417.
25 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 414.
26 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 415.
27 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 406.
28 Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, Medical and Social Aspects, 411.
29 Michaels, “Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity, 308.
30 Overfield, “The Abortion Debate Under Stalin,” 140.
31 Overfield, “The Abortion Debate Under Stalin,” 142.
32 Michaels, “Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity, 315.
33 Michaels, “Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity, 321.
34 Francome, Abortion Freedom, 63.