Russia considers law to ban defending child-free lifestyle

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 ($55,580) for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life — from casual conversation to films and books — and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement.

The crackdown on what the Kremlin calls the “childfree” movement will result in fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (around $4,300), 800,000 rubles for civil servants ($8,600), and up to five million rubles ($55,580) for companies or other legal entities. Foreigners will also be deported.

There are thousands of reasons why a person may decide not to have children, but the Cabinet of ministers has asked the State Duma to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also alleges that there is a mass-organized childfree movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of groups on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely have 5,000 members.

“We have started considering a bill banning propaganda of a conscious refusal to have children,” parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel. “Groups and communities on social networks often show disrespect for motherhood and fatherhood and aggression towards pregnant women and children and members of large families,” added the politician, a staunch defender of a war in Ukraine, which has left tens of thousands of Russian households without fathers and sons.

“Everything that needs to be done to increase the birth rate must be done. And everything that hinders this should disappear from our lives,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The politician, however, does not envisage Moscow joining the peace talks promoted by Ukraine. “For us, there is absolutely no alternative to achieving our set goals. As soon as these goals have been achieved in one way or another, the special military operation will be completed.”

Russian 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 10 people in a family.”

Even though Putin is about to celebrate 25 years in power, Russia — with 146 million inhabitants — has been suffering from demographic decline since the 20th century. This has been aggravated by the war in Ukraine, the inverted age pyramid and internal policies. 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 Russian financial crisis. What’s more, the tightening of immigration policies has prompted many foreigners to leave: the number of registered immigrants has fallen from 8.5 million to 6.1 million in the last year.

In 2007, Putin approved a maternity support program that pays mothers 466,617 rubles (around $5,000) for their first child, and 150,000 rubles ($1,600) for their second. However, this project has not boosted pregnancies in Russia, where only a tenth of the population earns more than $1,000 and a man can earn 10 times more a year at the front.

Meanwhile, the State Duma is also considering a bill — which was 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 by encouraging clandestine abortions. In addition, lawmakers are also discussing banning abortion after nine weeks, instead of 12.

First it was the LGBTQ+ community, then feminism, then…

Volodin said that Russian authorities will ban “childfree propaganda” on the internet and in the media, films and advertising. However, the precedent set by other Kremlin laws against freedom of expression — such as the law against the discrediting of the armed forces or the law against LGBTQ+ propaganda — leaves open the possibility that private conversations could be recorded and subsequently reported.

“These [measures] have been taken before against LGBTQ+ propaganda and gender reassignment,” Volodin said. Last year, Russia banned sex reassignment surgery for trans people, against World Health Organization guidelines, and also banned changing the gender markers on passports.

The proposed law to ban the choice no to have children is one more step in the Kremlin’s campaign to defend “traditional values.” Russian authorities accuse the West of being behind any liberal thought, even when it comes to universal human rights, and on these grounds, they repress any internal dissent that advocates for a different vision of Russia.

“I once said that we should ban the childless movement by law because this is a foreign project, it is a hostile project,” Valentina Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, said last week. “They are instilling in women’s brains, using the most modern technologies, that they should give up motherhood,” she added.

In the debate on the law, no lawmaker is likely to argue that the decision not to have children is a personal choice. Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov said in June that the government would promote initiatives “to protect the values of the Russian people,” while the Chairman of the Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last year that “LGBTQ people, radical feminism, radical environmentalism and the child-free movement dominate in the West.”

“Those who do not accept this ideology are declared enemies of freedom and supporters of tyranny,” said Fadeyev, who accused the West of “distorting” universal rights “in order to interfere in the internal affairs of states.” He added: “I call this ideology the ideology of death, the destruction of the family.”

Indeed, the space for debate in Russia is shrinking. Any citizen or foreigner who does not follow the dictates of the state are sent to prison or blacklisted. On Tuesday, the State Duma announced another legal reform to crackdown on comments online and in the media that “disrespect the honor or dignity of a government employee in terms of his personal or professional qualities.” Defendants who are found guilty of this crime face up to two years in prison.

These latest moves are unlikely to be the last of the Kremlin’s campaign to protect “traditional values.” The government fiercely defends these ideals, despite being hit by constant scandals. In September alone, two scandals have come to light: a lawmaker was recorded with a prostitute inside the Duma last weekend and at the start of the month, Russian children’s rights ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova married Konstantin Malofeyev, the owner of the ultra-Orthodox television channel Tsargrad. Until just a few months ago, the couple — both ardent defenders of traditional values — were married to other people.

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