MOSCOW, June 9 (RAPSI) - On June 18, the State Duma will hold a second reading of a bill on penalties for illegal abortion. The date was proposed by a committee for the Chamber on Constitutional Legislation and State-Building.

The Duma had proposed fines of 3,000 to 5,000 rubles for individuals, 10,000-30,000 ruble fines for officials and 100,000-150,000 ruble fines for legal entities. Previously, the proposed fine for officials had been close to 1 million rubles.

Starting January 12, 2012, there were new rules regulating abortion. A woman can have a pregnancy aborted until week 12 provided that she has been informed of the consequences and gives her consent. Also, she is given a ‘waiting period,’ to make a final decision.

Oleg Filippov, Deputy Head of the Department for Medical Care of Children and Obstetrics in the Healthcare Ministry, noted that the number of abortions had recently decreased from over a million to 880,000 a year. However, the data do not include private clinics.

Committee member Vladimir Ponevezhsky suggested that private clinics need to provide abortion statistics and should be penalized for failure to do so, so that the government can have complete data on the yearly abortion rate.