Global IssuesWhy Russia's Ban on Child-Free 'Propaganda' Impacts Human Rights
BRATISLAVA, Jan 06 (IPS) - “A lot of people are very scared,” says Zalina Marshenkulova. “This is obviously another tool of repression. The state is waging war on the remnants of free-thinking people in Russia and trying to suppress all dissent and freedom,” the Russian feminist activist tells IPS.
The warning from Marshenkulova, who left Russia soon after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and now lives in Germany, comes just days after new legislation came into force in her home country banning "child-free propaganda.”
Under the law, any person, organisation or government official deemed to be promoting a "child-free" lifestyle or encouraging people, either in person or online, not to have children can face huge fines and, in some cases, may be deported.
While MPs have stressed the legislation would not infringe on the right of individuals not to have children, critics fear it will be used in what some have described as an ongoing “crusade” by the Kremlin to promote a deeply conservative ideology centred around ‘traditional values’ and rejecting decadent Western ways of life—even at the expense of women’s reproductive rights.
“Women are already buying up all sorts of contraceptive pills . Abortions are already hard to get and that’s only going to get even harder now,” says Marshenkulova.
The legislation, which came into effect on December 4, introduces fines for individuals spreading “child-free propaganda” in broadcast media or online of up to 400,000 rubles (€3,840), while companies doing so can be fined up to 5 million rubles (€48,000) for the same offence. Foreign citizens who fall foul of the legislation will face deportation.
Its supporters have said the legislation is essential to protect Russia against a harmful Western ideology that could have devastating consequences for a country struggling with worrying negative demographic trends.
"We are talking about protecting citizens, primarily the younger generation, from information disseminated in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people's personalities," Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house of parliament, said ahead of the vote. "Everything must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up centred on traditional family values."
But human rights groups and activists say they have grave concerns about it. They point out that it has similarly vague language to other repressive laws passed in Russia in recent years that have been used to persecute minorities, such as LGBT+ people, and government critics, including civil society groups, as well as opponents of the invasion of Ukraine.
The relative novelty of the legislation means it is hard to gauge how strictly it will be implemented and what exactly authorities will see as ‘childfree propaganda’.
But it has already had some effect.
“The law is vague and broadly formulated so we can’t predict what things will be considered punishable—no one knows,” Anastasiia Zakharova, a lawyer at the Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre, told IPS.
“For example, a situation where women share publicly things like how hard it can be as a mother, how difficult it can be raising kids—will that be considered childfree propaganda? We have already seen that groups on social media where women talk about how hard it is raising children and being a mother have closed down to avoid potentially being fined. This law will have a chilling effect on what people will say,” she added.
Others say experience with Russian laws such as those introduced in the last decade banning “LGBT+ propaganda” provides a guide for how this legislation could impact women’s lives.
“This is another part of the Kremlin’s harmful ‘traditional values’ crusade. It will limit women’s freedom, their reproductive freedoms, and will stifle freedom generally,” Tanya Lokshina, Europe and Central Asia associate director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS.
“We can predict what the effects of this law will be because it is similar to the anti-LGBT+ propaganda law in Russia and we have seen the effects of that. It’s not so much that this kind of law targets individuals; it’s about purging the cultural arena of anything that could be even vaguely interpreted as propaganda,” she added.
She said while this could see a vast amount of films, shows and books disappearing from shop shelves, TV schedules, and online streaming services—"for example, a ‘romcom’ film in which you see a woman in her thirties with no children pursuing her career—anything like that is going to be outlawed. Can you imagine how many films, TV shows, books, etc. might have to be banned because of that? It’s mind-boggling," she said—it could also significantly impact reproductive health.
“Will children be able to get information about abortion and birth control? We saw what happened with the anti-LGBT+ law when teachers and others who should have been helping them could not, or would not, talk about . If children needed help, they couldn’t get it,” she said.
Other rights activists agreed.
“There will be problems for women to get information about abortions, contraception, and other reproductive health matters and it will be particularly difficult for young people who already might already be struggling with getting hold of information on these things and now won’t have any way at all to access it,” Natalia Morozova, Head of the Eastern Europe/Central Asia Desk at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), told IPS.
This comes at a time when women’s access to abortion is already being curtailed.
Elective abortion is legal in Russia up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and in some exceptional cases, such as rape, up to the 22nd week. However, in recent years there have been moves to limit access to the procedure.
Laws have been introduced in some regions outlawing “coercing” women—the legislation defines this as persuading, bribing, or deceiving a woman into undergoing the procedure—to have an abortion, while hundreds of private clinics across the country have followed a ‘voluntarily initiative’ supported by the Health Ministry and have stopped offering abortions.
The state has also introduced guidelines for doctors to encourage female patients to have children, but also to dissuade them from abortions.
“Already in state clinics in Russia, doctors put pressure on women to have children. There are women who have gone to a clinic and been questioned by doctors on why they have no children and why they don’t want to have them yet,” said Lokshina.
Health experts have already pointed to the dangers of restricting abortions, with World Health Organisation (WHO) officials previously warning that bans on private clinics performing abortions would force more women in Russia into having surgical abortions rather than medical abortions. Private clinics mainly offer medical abortions, whereas state hospitals perform surgical abortions, which carry higher risks of complications, side effects and injuries.
The WHO also raised concerns that tightening access to legal abortions could lead to a spike in dangerous illegal procedures.
This tightening of access to abortion and the passing of the ‘childfree propaganda’ law come as the Kremlin battles a demographic crisis amid rising mortality as Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine grinds on and the country’s birth rate falls.
Data from statistics service Rosstat showed 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, which is 16,000 fewer births year-on-year and the lowest figure since 1999. Meanwhile, the number of newborns fell 6 percent in June to 98,600, which is the first time the number fell below 100,000. There were 325,100 deaths recorded between January and June, which is 49,000 more than in the same period of 2023.
The Kremlin has called the demographic situation a “catastrophe” for the nation and lawmakers who backed the ‘childfree propaganda’ legislation see it as a way to help halt population decline.
But Morozova said the Kremlin’s main motive was bolstering its armed forces to continue fighting in Ukraine.
“They want a population that produces soldiers, women that produce soldiers. The only goal of this regime is to produce as many soldiers as possible,” she said.
According to Lokshina, the law will also give the Kremlin an extra tool in its fight against a group that many experts see as potentially the biggest threat to President Putin’s hold on power.
“The most notable protests since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been women’s protests. The Kremlin sees women as being problematic and wants to silence them,” she said.
While it remains to be seen how the law will be implemented and interpreted by authorities in the future, some activists have already left the country in response to its passage, fearing it could be used against them.
But there are doubts the legislation will have any effect on the birth rate.
Some Russian women who spoke to western media ahead of the legislation’s approval said women’s decisions on whether to have children or not are largely rooted in financial concerns at a time when the economy is struggling, rather than anyone else’s opinion on their right to have children or not.
And research carried out by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) in October showed that 66 percent of Russians doubted fines for promoting childfree ideology would be effective.
“The law has no potential to influence the birth rate,” said Lokshina. “It is aimed at stifling dissent—in this case, the rejection of so-called traditional family values.”
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© Inter Press Service (2025) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service