Russia lawmakers pass bill banning “child-free propaganda”

Moscow — Russian lawmakers on Tuesday passed controversial legislation banning “propaganda” that urges people to opt against having children, the latest measure targeting what Moscow depicts as Western liberal ideas. Facing an ageing population and low birth rates, Moscow is seeking to reverse a demographic slump — accentuated by its ongoing full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine — that threatens its economic future.

Members of the Russian parliament’s lower house, the Duma, voted unanimously in favor of the draft bill, which would apply to materials online, in media, advertising and in films that promote a “rejection of childbearing.”

The bill targets “destructive content” that promotes a “conscious” rejection of having children.

The bill’s authors have said it will not be used as punishment for “a personal choice or lifestyle” but only for promoting such a lifestyle, although it is unclear how this would be differentiated in practice.

Under the ban on “child-free propaganda,” violations would be punishable by fines up to 400,000 rubles (about $4,000) on individuals and up to 5 million rubles, or about $51,000, for businesses. The bill also includes a provision to deport foreigners found guilty of disseminating the banned information.

“This is a fateful law… Without children, there will be no country. This ideology will lead to people stopping giving birth to children,” the Duma’s speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said ahead of the vote.

He also said the legislation was about “protecting citizens, primarily the generation growing up, from information spread in the media space that negatively affects the development of personality.”

The effort was “so new generations of our citizens grow up orientated towards traditional family values”, he said.

Nina Ostanina, a Communist Party lawmaker who heads the Duma committee on family policy, said the bill aims to “guard our youth from unnecessary ideologies.”

The legislation will now be considered by the upper house of parliament on November 20, before coming before President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to sign it into law.

It comes on top of existing bans on “propaganda” of LGBTQ relationships or changing gender.

The Duma also unanimously passed legislation Tuesday banning foreigners living in countries that allow gender reassignment from adopting Russian children. The bill is aimed at stopping Russian-born children being able to legally change their gender.

Moscow has long portrayed itself as a bulwark against liberal values, but that trend has hugely accelerated since the Kremlin launched its Ukraine offensive, further rupturing ties with the West.

The bill would ban adoption by citizens of countries that authorize “the change of sex by medical intervention, including with the use of medicine,” or allow individuals to change their gender on official identity documents.

Since 1993, foreigners have adopted 102,403 children from Russia, Volodin said, warning that “Western policy towards children is destructive.”

Russia previously banned all U.S. adoptions in 2012 with a bill named after a Russian toddler who died of heat stroke in 2008 after his adoptive American father forgot him in a car.

Russia has created an inhospitable environment for LBGTQ people for years. In July 2023, it banned the “international LGBT movement” as extremist and made gender reassignment illegal.

Putin himself has repeatedly mocked people who have undergone gender reassignment as well as LGBTQ people.