Russian lawmakers submitted a bill to parliament that would ban abortions in private clinics and omit them from state insurance policies. (Representational Image)
Russian lawmakers on Tuesday submitted a bill to parliament that would ban abortions in private clinics and omit them from state insurance policies.
The measure, the latest in Russia's conservative drive and embracing of church values, would allow abortions to be covered by state healthcare only if the pregnancy threatened a woman's life, according to one of the authors of the bill, Yelena Mizulina.
The bill has been added to parliament's database and will have to be reviewed by the chamber's speaker before being put to a vote.
"Free medical care programmes are directed first of all towards saving lives and (the) health of people," Mizulina said Tuesday in a series of Twitter posts.
"An abortion is not a medical or health-improving procedure and is not a strict necessity," she said.
"Money saved from the state healthcare budget will be used to support pregnant women in a tough life situation."
Mizulina is known as an extremely conservative MP who publically backed taking children away from LGBT parents, banning surrogacy and introducing a tax on Russians seeking a divorce.
She said her bill would not ban abortions altogether, as women could still go to a state clinic and pay for the procedure.
Russia is known to have an extremely high abortion rate as it was one of the few methods of birth control in the Soviet era, peaking in the 1960s.
Rates have steadily declined since the fall of the Soviet Union, but they are still higher than most developed countries.
The numbers went down with wider availability of birth control as well as government measures to boost birth rates, such as social benefits to families with multiple children.
The country registered more than one million abortions in 2013 (the latest available period), or nearly 28 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, while fewer than 540,000 babies were born in the same year.
Abortion has been legal in Russia from 1920 and permitted for all women in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. At later stages they are allowed for medical reasons or after a rape.