The Autocrat to Anti-Abortion Pipeline

Russia is the latest country to take a turn toward authoritarianism and away from women's rights.

All around the world, reproductive rights serve as a bellwether: Where abortion access expands, it’s usually a sign of democracy and human rights expansion more broadly; where abortion access contracts, it’s usually a sign of rising authoritarianism and a walking back of human rights.

And so predictably, Russia is increasingly restricting both abortion and emergency contraception.

The Russian law restricting abortion access is just a proposal for now. But already, clinics across the country have been refusing to provide abortions, and have the government’s blessing in doing so: The Health Ministry has even written up talking points for doctors to refuse abortion care. The Health Ministry has also put mifepristone and misoprostol — abortion pills — on a registry of controlled substances, which will make them increasingly difficult for pharmacies to stock and for women to get. Several brands of emergency contraception are on the list as well, which will effectively outlaw them once the registry goes into effect next fall.

There is a long and ugly history of restricting reproductive rights in Russia, and across the Soviet Union. Stalin banned the procedure, and women were predictably forced to seek out dangerous illegal procedures. The ban was lifted in the 1950s, but it did not come along with an embrace of family planning. By contrast, the government instituted a pro-natalist policy, encouraging women to both have babies and get back to work. During much of the Soviet era, contraception was hard to come by, and as a result, Russia had extraordinarily high rates of both abortion and maternal mortality. In some regions of the country, abortion rates were higher than anywhere else in the world.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the Russian government invested a bit more in family planning tools, and reliable contraceptives were finally available to Russian women. Predictably, rates of both abortion and maternal mortality tanked. Women were able to plan their pregnancies, and as a result, fewer had abortions. Fewer also died.

Now, though, we’re seeing a reversal. As Russia moves away from its hard-won democratic turn, it’s also moving away from the abortion rights and contraception access that saved so many women’s and children’s lives.

Abortion restrictions in Russia are part of a broader national return to “traditionalism,” as dictated by the Russian Orthodox Church. The country has rolled back laws criminalizing domestic violence and has cracked down on gay rights and banned so much as discussing sexuality beyond the patriarchal. This week, the government blamed “outside interference” after a mob stormed an airport in the Dagestan region, hunting for Jewish passengers on a flight landing from Israel. This is the autocrat’s playbook: Emphasize traditionalism, patriarchy, conservative religiosity, and nationalism, and cast women’s rights, human rights norms, and religious and ethnic minorities as dangerous outside enemies.

Vladimir Putin and Russia are far from the only actors carrying out this script. While abortion laws are generally liberalizing around the world, a handful of nations have restricted the procedure, and to a one those restrictions — and crackdowns on LGBT and minority rights — have come with declining democracy and rising autocracy. This is on clear view in Russia, and also in Poland, Nicaragua, Hungary, Turkey, and the United States. It’s quite a challenge to look at a map of the world and identify many countries that extend solid human rights protections but also criminalize abortion.

This is a real divide, and the US is on the wrong side of it. That doesn’t have to be permanent, but if we do want to see reproductive rights restored, it’s crucial to understand that these very basic rights are foundational to women’s freedom, and that you can’t have a democracy if half of your population isn’t free.

xx Jill