Women in Moscow walk past a poster promoting enlistment in the Russian military, 8 April 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / YURI KOCHETKOV

Hospitals in Russia’s Vologda region have denied at least five women access to abortions after the regional governor called for a total ban on terminating pregnancies in the northwestern region earlier this month, two regional deputies have claimed.

Regional Communist Party deputy Alexander Morozov first went public about the apparently informal new policy in a post on Russian social media site VK on Thursday, after being contacted by three women telling him they had been denied abortion care at state-run medical clinics in the region.

According to Morozov, one of the women was forced to spend 50,000 rubles (€540) travelling to the neighbouring Yaroslavl region to have the procedure done. Two other women wrote to Alexey Kanaev, who represents the Vologda region in the State Duma, saying that they had both recently been denied abortions too.

Earlier this month, Vologda Governor Georgy Filimonov announced that the regional government would “discuss the need to ban abortions even in private clinics” as part of his campaign to “fight the depopulation of the Russian North”, despite the fact that abortions in Russia are covered by free public health insurance and are available on request until the 12th week of pregnancy.

Although there has been no abortion ban legislated in the region, on Tuesday Filimonov demanded the regional government “take control” of every case of abortion and called on both private and state clinics to voluntarily stop offering abortion procedures to women, except in cases of rape or medical complications.

Writing to the Vologda regional prosecutor, Morozov, himself a former doctor, stressed that denying women abortions was illegal under Russian federal law and urged the prosecutor’s office to investigate the matter.

In comments published on the regional Communist Party website on Friday, Morozov also insisted that a total abortion ban would do nothing to tackle the region’s demographic crisis, and that “ensuring confidence in the future” and providing prospective parents with the necessary support would be a far more impactful approach, noting that making such policy “without broad consultations” was particularly harmful.