The anti-abortion agenda in the conservative discourse in Russia: ideological campaigns, legal initiatives and regional practices
Abstract
The article examines the processes of conservative mobilization in Russia in 2000-2010s as a deployment of ideological propaganda campaigns using the conservative rhetoric of the traditional family, traditional values, and traditional gender roles in order to solve “demographic problems”, above all the increase of fertility. The main focus of the article is the discourse on abortion. State anti-abortion propaganda is viewed as a “litmus test” of the ongoing processes of retraditionalization of state ideology and of instruments for regulating reproduction and sexuality. In analyzing the legislative and regional initiatives of the period under study, the authors describe the main public actors of the regional and federal levels, as well as the rhetoric they use. The article shows that since the 2000s one of the leading actors working for the adoption of anti-abortion legislation has been the Russian Orthodox Church. At the same time, there have been public actors at the federal level who have held back the adoption of anti-abortion legislation and have been consistently critical of anti-abortion rhetoric. At the same time, on the regional level, pro-conservative mobilization actors have effectively used state support, without encountering noticeable criticism. Substantively anti-abortion rhetoric is inscribed in the discourse on demographic problems and population decline as a threat to national security. It is aimed at regulating the behavior of citizens in the field of intimacy, their bodies, and morality, thus representing a variant of biopolitics in the terms of Michel Foucault. In this sense, the ultimate goal of conservative mobilization is to create docile citizens indoctrinated with the ideology of a traditional family lifestyle and large families.
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