Russia has begun banning pages with information about medication abortions on...

Russia has begun banning pages containing information about medication abortions on clinic websites

Moscow’s Khamovniki District Court has declared prohibited in Russia pages on the websites of three Moscow clinics that described the medication-abortion procedure. Verstka found the relevant ruling in the court database.

These are pages on the websites of the Edis Med Co, Dobromed, and DeVita clinics. They are now unavailable, but copies have been preserved in the web archive. All three pages contained information about how an abortion is performed, contraindications, and how to prepare for one.

The prosecutor’s office demanded that the pages be banned. The court ruling says the stated reason was allegedly information about the possibility of having an abortion on the day of visiting the clinic. Under the law, artificial termination of pregnancy may be performed “no earlier than 48 hours after a woman contacts a medical organization.”

At the same time, in archived versions of the pages Verstka found information that abortions could be performed on the day of the visit only on the website of the DeVita center.

In the other two cases, the prosecutor’s office probably interpreted other wording this way. For example, the website of the Dobromed clinic stated that “doctors of every specialty” see patients “on the day they apply.”

And the website of Edis Med Co stated that “the patient is examined, tests are conducted, the pregnancy and its exact term are established. The patient then takes the medication and receives precise information about what to do in the event of unforeseen complications.” The website did not say that all this takes place on the day of the visit.

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