While Russia has historically had a liberal abortion policy — with the exception of the Stalin-era ban — the conservative turn among the country’s leadership, combined with a push from the Russian Orthodox Church, have put a target on the issue.

  • tal@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I once tried eyeballing – no serious statistical analysis – national total fertility rates for a number of countries and then looking up when abortion became legal. I didn’t see an obvious drop anywhere around legalization.

    Legalized oral contraception did have a visible difference, though.

    I’m not sure that re-banning abortion is actually gonna have much impact on fertility rates, though I’d be interested to see whether someone running an actual statistical analysis turns up anything.

    A complicating factor might be enforcement level – like, some countries might have had abortion be illegal at some point in time but also not enforced laws on it much. I did not attempt to account for that. Also might be a spillover effect from nearby countries with legalized abortion; people might just have traveled and gotten an abortion outside of their home region.