State Duma deputy and TV presenter Oksana Pushkina called the restriction of women's abortion rights a disaster. Thus, she commented on the document of the Ministry of Health, which establishes a list of medical indications for abortion, RBC reports.
According to her, the document goes beyond purely medical issues. “This is biopolitics. At the end of the 70s, [French philosopher] Michel Foucault called this term the state's intervention in the biological life of citizens,”the MP said.
Pushkina noted that the document refers to the restriction of the rights of women to terminate pregnancy by a list of pathologies and diseases. She added that she does not encourage abortion and considers it one of the markers of social disadvantage. However, the decisive word in the dispute over a woman's right to abortion should be said by women's associations and organizations that listen to the advice of the medical community, the MP said.
“Talk to grandmothers and great-grandmothers who remember the post-war years, when abortions were prohibited in the USSR! Then this led to a monstrous increase in the number of artisanal abortions performed by village midwives,”said Pushkina.
Earlier, the Ministry of Health published a document in which it noted that the active phase of tuberculosis, stage 4 HIV, mental disorders, behavioral disorders, rubella before 20 weeks of pregnancy, schizophrenia, inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system, and renal failure may become indications for artificial termination of pregnancy.
The document indicates that the indicators are also the absence of limbs and the physical immaturity of a woman before reaching 15 years. In this case, the decision on each specific case is made by a council of doctors, at which all factors are taken into account.
