LEGISLATIVE ACTS ON WOMEN’S HEALTH PROTECTION THE FIRST DECADES OF THE SOVIET POWER

Abstract

The article highlights the legislation on women’s health protection that was in force in post-revolutionary Soviet Russia. The socio-economic problems that resulted from the revolutionary events of October 1917, the First World War of 1914–1918, famine and pestilence in the Volga region, and other upheavals of the early twentieth century, gave rise to a huge number of problems that the Soviet authorities immediately addressed. However, not all the actions of the Soviet government achieved their goals; there were unresolved issues in the field of healthcare, in particular, in protecting and preserving the health of female workers and peasants. The interruption of childbearing not in medical organizations due to infection, illiteracy of abortionists in matters of abortion resulted in a high mortality rate of the female population of the country, which could not but cause concern to the authorities and the general public, who understood the social reasons for such actions. The legislative act «On Protection of Women’s Health», adopted on November 18, 1920, was the basis for the diverse work carried out with women, which established not only the conditions for legal abortion, but also established penalties for both a doctor who decided to perform such an operation and for a woman who consented to a miscarriage. The analysis of adopted legal provisions makes it possible to see the general picture of the state policy of the young Soviet state in the field of marriage and family, in particular, in issues of health protection of working women, and gives the opportunity to conclude that it was well thought out within the historical framework under consideration.