Rejecting Motherhood in the Motherland: Abortion and reproductive rights in the USSR, and what we can learn about effective policy implementation
- Valeriya Damola
- Jan 14, 2024
- 6 min read
The USSR is often hailed as a 'trailblazer’ in discussions surrounding progressive policy making on abortion and reproductive rights. Leftist circles see it as a blueprint - a state ahead of its time - being the first country to legalise abortion in the world. However, the promotion of reproductive rights and the legalisation of abortion in the USSR, was not a monolithic policy implementation, with periods of criminalisation being present throughout its short-lived history. This piece will analyse this timeline, exploring the nuanced reasoning behind such quick policy fluctuation, and begin to think about what influence, if any, Soviet views on abortion have had on abortion policy, focusing on a much more conservative Russia today. It will discuss the influences behind the use of abortion as a method of ‘family planning’ and will look into the notion of an ‘abortion culture’. What can we learn from the USSR about the puzzle pieces needed to create a society in which the choice to have a child remains a choice, but is substantially easier as more support is provided to mothers, and more options are available in the form of accessible contraception?
To begin with, it's important to contextualise attitudes and the legal standing of abortion in Tsarist Russia. In Pre-Revolutionary Russia, it had been illegal, generally seen as a taboo topic to discuss, and was deemed ‘infanticide’ in the Sobornie Ulozhenie (‘Council Code’) in 1649. In this same document, it was officially punishable by death. The Russian Orthodox Church, then as now, played a large part in preaching the ‘immorality’ of abortion. As time went on, abortions fell into a grey area, not directly being classified as infanticide but at the same time still being officially penalised by a range of punishments from being sent to labour camps, to being exiled to Siberia and spending time in workhouses. However, as is evidenced in numerous examples, its illegal status did not mean that abortions did not occur (Avdeev et al 1995: Table 3). Due to widespread poverty and dismal living conditions, having more children was often not a favourable option and women went to extreme lengths to terminate pregnancies, often resulting in illness and death from the use of unsafe methods. Abortions widely took place, often being assisted by village midwives and nurses, who, although medically trained, would perform the abortions in unsanitary conditions, leading to life-threatening complications (Mace and Mace 1963: 243). Although, as mentioned above, there were legal sanctions for both the patient and medical professional, they were rarely punished.
Abortion under any circumstance was legalised in the USSR for the first time in 1920. The reasons for this massive overhaul of policy are varied. It is known that “Lenin advocated unlimited abortion rights long before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution” (Karpov and Kääriäinen 2005) but other scholars argue that it was less of a push for the recognition of women’s bodily autonomy, and more of a preventative measure to reduce the high rate of female mortality associated with unsafe, illegal practices of abortion. Either way, the legalisation of abortion brought about other changes, particularly to do with the conditions in which abortion was practised as a way to tackle the unsanitary abortion procedures that many women had been forced to turn to. But by then the population began to rapidly decline and in 1936, abortion was criminalised once more. The Stalinist era would bring about policies which not only aimed to boost the productivity of workers but also the rate of reproduction amongst women, in an attempt to boost the size of families and the overall population. Incentives were given out to encourage women to have more children. The issue was that these policies were largely based on Marx and Engels’ theory that women “would not fear conception because the burden of housework and childcare would shift from the individual household to the social collective” (Ben-Barak 1988), thus allowing them to engage in other aspects of life. This style of communal living and responsibility never came into fruition - the collective was never fully formed to help women raise their children. Instead, women were now expected to not only perform domestic labour but also go out and work, leaving little time or energy for child rearing. As Karpov and Kääriäinen (2005) detail, “Women's formally equal rights in a nation with low standards of living and conservative gender stereotypes translated into the necessity of combining motherhood with two full-time jobs”. Consequently, the rate of illegal abortions soared as women began to view it as a form of ‘family-planning’ - a retaliation against this “double burden” (Ben-Barak 1988).
It is interesting to pick up on this point of abortion as a method of ‘family-planning’. The USSR did not actively promote the use of contraception and public opinion of it was overwhelmingly negative for the majority of the Union’s existence. In 1962, seven years after abortion was legalised once again in 1955, at the Conference of the International Parenthood Federation in Poland, the Soviet delegation stated that the Soviet health authorities viewed the Pill as disruptive to women’s menstrual health, and thus disapproved its use in clinics. Remennick (1991) writes that abortion "has never been a matter of choice for Soviet women (hence 'pro-choice' terminology would be inappropriate here) but rather a pressing necessity created by the lack of alternative”. There are countless surveys and studies demonstrating that Soviet women felt that contraception was either not readily available for them or that it was not safe. Heer (1965) analyses one such study published in the journal ‘Sovetskoe Zdravookhraneniye' where in the chosen region, 52% of respondents did not use any type of contraception at all. Thus, abortion, as a familiar procedure that guaranteed the termination of a pregnancy, was extremely relied on to limit the size of families.
So, is there anything to learn from this? One point is that abortions occur regardless of legal standing and will continue to take place. Russia still has the highest abortion rate - 53.7 abortions per 1000 pregnancies (according to the UN), in the world. This is despite a more conservative and traditional programme being rolled out by the Kremlin in collaboration with the Russian Orthodox Church, a slight shift in public opinion on the moral implications of abortion, and a steady decline in the abortion rate in the last 20 years. In 2003, the list of circumstances that make an abortion viable was reduced from 13 to just three and there are fears of a total ban. However, for now, it seems that abortion will continue to be a medical procedure widely accepted by the Russian public, due to a so-called ‘abortion culture’.
Second, I think it's important that when we analyse the case of the USSR, we are careful to take away not that the legalisation of abortion will bring about population decline or a country in despair - we must not forget that the course of Russian political and social life has been influenced by numerous intersecting factors - poverty, social inequality, corruption - and that many of these have contributed to a declining birthrate. Instead, we should look not at what the USSR did ‘right’, but what it got wrong. We must understand that the legalisation of abortion is necessary, and works best in conjunction with increased education about, and accessibility to contraception, as well as the right support being given to women in terms of childcare benefits, better paid maternity leave, and increased employment stability/ certainty. These policy changes will work to ensure that women do not feel that pregnancy and childbirth will jeopardise the socio-economic standing of either themselves or their child.
There must be safe, accessible methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Decriminalisation of abortion, at the very least, may only be one part of the solution, but it is an absolute necessity.
Bibliography:
Avdeev, Alexandre, et al. “The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991.” Population: An English Selection, vol. 7, 1995, pp. 39–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2949057.
Mace, David & Vera Mace. The Soviet Family. Hutchinson, London. 1963.
Karpov, Vyacheslav, and Kimmo Kääriäinen. “‘Abortion Culture’ in Russia: Its Origins, Scope, and Challenge to Social Development.”, 2005. Journal of Applied Sociology, vol. 22, no. 2
Ben-Barak, Shalvia. “Abortion in the Soviet Union: Why It Is So Widely Practiced.” The Soviet Union: Party and Society, edited by Peter J. Potichnyj, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. pp. 201–217. International Council for Central and East European Studies.
Remennick, Larissa I."Epidemiology and Determinants of Induced Abortion in the USSR. Social Science & Medicine, 1991.
Heer, David M. “Abortion, Contraception, and Population Policy in the Soviet Union.” Soviet Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 1965, pp. 76–83.
Bearak, Jonathan Marc, Anna Popinchalk, and Cynthia Beavin, et al Country-specific estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion incidence: a global comparative analysis of levels in 2015–2019 BMJ Global Health, 2022.
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