By Murad Rakhimov | 2025-11-26

As Russia's birthrate sinks to historic lows, the government is responding not with support but with pressure. New laws, fines and surveillance tools now police abortion -- and a regional deputy's assertion that rape victims should give birth shows how far that pressure has spread.

Vyacheslav Vegner, a member of the Sverdlovsk regional legislature, has urged Russian women to carry pregnancies to term even when conception results from rape.

Speaking to the local Channel 4 television station earlier in November, Vegner said a pregnancy after rape is "God's will." He argued that such children could be given up for adoption and said, "There is a long line to adopt children in the country." Psychologists, he added, should persuade women in these situations to relinquish their newborns to families that "need" them.

He said many Russian families cannot have children and are willing to wait years to adopt.

Doubling of the crime

Dmitry Dubrovsky, a lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague, called Vegner's proposal a "doubling" of the crime.

"Rape in and of itself is a crime. For the woman it's a catastrophe. But forcing her to give birth after she's raped is adding another assault on top of the first one -- it's doubling the crime," he told Kontur.

Dubrovsky also noted the contrast between Russia's near-total halt of foreign adoptions and its narrow domestic demand for "exceptionally healthy, attractive and intelligent children."

"The Russian government's unscrupulousness is rather noticeable," he said.

In September 2024, Russia stopped allowing most foreign adoptions. An amendment to the Family Code barred adoptions by nationals of countries that permit gender transition and by citizens of other "unfriendly" states.

Adil Turdukulov, a prominent Kyrgyz journalist, said that when a lawmaker calls on a woman to give birth after being raped, he does so not as a private citizen but as a representative of the state.

"The state is trying to displace responsibility for someone else's crime onto the victim's shoulders. They explain to the woman once again that she owes something," he told Kontur.

He said the rapist "disappears" from the official narrative while the system ignores the crime itself. Such statements normalize rape "for the sake of the state's interests." As a result, women bear the costs of both the assault and the government’s failure to solve Russia's demographic crisis.

Crackdown on abortion

Vegner's comments come amid a broader drive to curb abortion.

So far, 27 regions, including Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Belgorod and Novgorod regions, the Komi and Mordovia republics and Crimea, have adopted laws against the "coercion" of women to terminate pregnancies. Violations carry fines of 3,000–5,000 RUB ($37–$62). Lawmakers may soon consider a federal version, backed by the Women for Life foundation and supported by members of United Russia in the State Duma.

Women for Life also launched a chatbot for filing reports about anyone who "urged" a woman to have an abortion. The bot asks for the woman's name, region and a description of the incident. If the suggestion came from a doctor, she must list the medical facility.

Turdukulov called these efforts another failed attempt to raise the birthrate.

"You can't force a family to plan its future when it has no certainty about its income, housing or healthcare," he said.

He argued that a "digital gulag" has entered the private sphere, replacing social support with surveillance.

"Instead of providing access to decent healthcare, the Russian government is choosing control and creating an atmosphere of fear in which a woman risks being fined for even having a conversation about her own health," he said.

As of November 11, 752 private clinics in 14 regions had stopped licensing abortions and offering related services.

Demographic crisis deepens

Russia's demographic picture continues to worsen.

Rosstat reported 1.222 million births last year, the fewest since 1999. Births fell another 4% in the first quarter of this year, to 288,800.

Demographer Alexey Raksha said the current decline is the lowest since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The total fertility rate in May 2025 was 1.376 children per woman, down from 1.76 in 2015 and 1.47 in 2021.

Alisher Ilkhamov, director of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence, said Putin long ago adopted ultraconservative ideology as a political tool, elevating "traditional values" and Orthodox religion to counter the West. This logic now helps justify restrictions on abortion.

"This ultraconservative ideology is basically degrading human life," Ilkhamov told Kontur.

Dubrovsky warned that bans will only drive women to clandestine procedures: "The gray zone will escalate… just like we saw in the Soviet Union." He said the real objective is "absolute conservative control over women."

In November 2024, Russia introduced administrative penalties for so-called child-free propaganda -- public statements about the choice not to have children -- with fines from 50,000 to 1 million RUB ($625–$12,500).

Blogger and rights activist Alexander Kim said the Kremlin's demographic strategy resembles breeding "animals in captivity," and that Vegner's proposal exposes the contempt behind it.

"Can you imagine how much the government must scorn people to propose something like this? You get the sense that the Putin regime views Russian women as a herd of female humans of childbearing age," he told Kontur.