The State Duma discussed the reproductive health of teenagers

The State Duma discussed “sex education in the context of traditional values.” Most of the meeting was devoted to the reproductive health of adolescents.

The discussion took place within the framework of the development of a school program on family studies. According to Elena Sheshko, an employee of the Ministry of Health, such lessons should be directed at the formation of “intolerance to childlessness” and the popularization of large families “as the basis of a healthy society.” After all, the goal of the state is to save the nation and increase the birth rate, Sheshko said.

State Duma deputy Tatiana Larionova recalled how in the 1990s doctors came to school to talk about contraception. “I myself am a mother, a grandmother, despite the fact that I understood that this is important and necessary, but this cry of “give me a condom to avoid pregnancy” was superfluous,” Larionova said.

Veronika Vlasova, who “supervises abortion issues in the State Duma”, said that “we are all for chastity”, but about half of teenage girls start their “sexual life” at the age of 15.5. According to her, now there is a fight for every pregnancy. She showed the slides according to which, in response to the phrase “I am a child myself” by a pregnant underage girl, an obstetrician-gynecologist should say “It’s great to be a young mother!”

Leila Namazova-Baranova, a participant in the meeting from the Ministry of Health, devoted part of her speech to the Western “shushare”, after which she said that “responsible attitude towards one’s health is part of patriotic education”. She noted that children are now “more developed in terms of physiological functions, but more infantile” and do not understand what abortion is.

For now, they plan to make family studies an elective.

• The birth rate in Russia has been falling since 2014 – and according to the results of last year, it is at the level of 1999, when the minimum number of newborns in the history of modern Russia was recorded.
• The falling birth rate is regularly brought up for discussion by the Russian authorities. In order to “raise the demographics”, they come up with initiatives to restrict access to abortion and contraception.