Criminal Liability for Illegal Abortions in the Russian Federation and Foreign Countries

Special place in system of crimes against persons is illegal carrying out of artificial interruption of pregnancy, classified according to article 123 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The specificity of this crime leads in practice to a high degree of latency, and the lack of specific recommendations for an integrated approach to identifying criminal abortions – to a large number of unsolved crimes in this category. According to official statistics, 57% of all pregnancies end in abortion in Russia. The number of cases of illegal termination of pregnancy in the Russian Federation is 25 %. The death rate from complications of induced abortion in the Russian Federation is 6.3 cases per 100,000 abortions, approximately 10 times higher than in Western Europe and North America, and forms about 25% of the total maternal mortality rate in the country. The relevance of the chosen topic is that non-compliance with the rules established by the health authorities, often entails significant consequences for women's health. In this paper, we analyze the domestic sources of foreign legislation regulating the production of abortion and establish penalties for violations of the order, the measures proposed to address gaps in the current legislation.