The Role of Law in Preserving Traditional Family Values in Modern Russia

Preservation of peoples of Russia and development of human potential is a priority goal of the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, the achievement of which is based on the implementation of tasks to preserve traditional family values, increase the birth rate and create motivation for having many children. Unfortunately, the implementation of the declared priorities is hampered by the following problems: 1) changing attitudes towards marriage as a union between a man and a woman, expanding its characteristics by including cohabitation and homosexual relationships; 2) decrease in interest in entering into a civil marriage among modern youth; 3) deliberate delay by people of reproductive age in realizing their potential for conceiving, bearing and raising children; 4) propaganda through the protection of a woman’s right to abortion, including among and in relation to a potential mother who is faced with a choice; 5) unresolved problems in the field of assisted reproduction against the background of the total number of infertile patients. To solve these problems the following proposals are put forward: 1) to make changes to the Family Code of Russia, where the definitions of “marriage” and “family” should be provided; 2) exclude from legislation a woman’s right to artificial termination of pregnancy outside of social and medical indications; 3) provide for new and extend existing measures of state support for families, including those with children; 4) adopt a separate federal law in the field of reproductive rights and human freedoms, where to develop a conceptual apparatus, regulate the rights of participants in legal relations, establish prohibitions and restrictions based on the parity of private and public interests.