The holy war on reproductive rights: the Russian Orthodox Church as an anti-abortion lobbyist in contemporary Russia

This article analyses the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as an anti-abortion lobbyist in contemporary Russia and evaluates its influence on reproductive health policy between 2010 and 2024. While existing scholarship has emphasised the ROC’s role in promoting traditional values and legitimising the conservative turn in Putin’s Russia, this article reconceptualises the Church as a lobbying actor seeking concrete policy change. It asks through what mechanisms, and to what extent, the ROC has influenced abortion policy and situates the case within broader anti-gender mobilisation and religious opposition to reproductive rights. Drawing on process tracing and preference attainment analysis, this article shows that the ROC has influenced policy through privileged institutional access to state authorities and by balancing religious absolutism with political pragmatism. While the Church has failed to achieve its maximalist goal of banning abortion entirely or removing it from the public healthcare system, it has nonetheless been successful in undermining reproductive autonomy and endangering access to abortion in contemporary Russia.