Abortion in Armenia

Abortion in Armenia is legal on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in special circumstances between 12 weeks and 22 weeks.^[1] Abortion has been legal since 23 November 1955, when Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union.^[2][3] Pregnancies may be ended on request by the pregnant woman until the twelfth week and for medical and social reasons until the twenty-second week with a doctor's approval.^[4] Since 2016, when a law banning sex-selective abortion was passed, mandatory counseling is required before abortion along with a three-day waiting period. The law has been criticized as using sex-selective abortion as a pretext to restrict access to abortion, although the government denied this, and claimed that it did not intend to question women's right to access safe abortion.^[5]

Abortion was used as a manner of birth control in Armenia^[6] and the number of maternal deaths from abortion complications used to be very high (between 10 and 20% in 2000).^[2] After massive reforms, the number of deaths declined to 5% in 2005.^[2]

In 2014, 21.77% of pregnancies in Armenia ended in abortion, a slight rise from the all-time low recorded in 2010 (21.52%).^[7] The United Nations reported an abortion rate (expressed as the number of abortions per 1000 women aged 15–44) of 13.9 in 2004^[8] and 16.9 as of 2010^[update].^[9]

Armenia, together with other countries, notably China and India, has problem with sex-selective abortion.^[10][11][12] This has caused major political debates, both internationally and nationally. Nevertheless, Armenia's policies to deal with this issue have been controversial and subject to criticism.^[13][14]

In 2016, the country adopted regulations to curb this practice. Sex-selective abortion was explicitly outlawed in 2016.^[15] However, even before 2016, sex-selective abortion was implicitly banned, as ever since Armenia's legalization of abortion in 1955 under Soviet law, it has always restricted abortion after the first trimester, when sex-selective abortions happen. The only thing that has changed several times throughout the years is the reasons laid down by the government for an abortion after 12 weeks to be approved.^[3] Since sex selection was never an approved legal reason, such abortions were always technically illegal.^[16] As such, the 2016 law explicitly banning abortion for reasons of sex-selection was seen as redundant and unenforceable. It came with a major controversy: a three-day waiting period requirement.^[14] There has been concern that poor women from rural areas will not be able to afford to travel several times to cities to have safe abortions, thus increasing the rate of unsafe abortion in the country, especially given the high rate of abortion in general.^[14] A criticism of Armenia's policies that deal with sex selection is that they do not focus on the culture which sees women as inferior and which fuels sex selection due to the way girls are devalued.^[17]

Social Causes of the Sex-Selective Abortions

In the 2020 report, the Human Rights Office of Armenia, under the conduction of Arman Tatoyan, declared that Armenian society faced fundamental errors concerning sex-selective abortions. Due to him, sex-selective abortions are primarily discrimination towards the female gender and female societal role. ^[18] There are two sides to such an inclination toward gender bias. According to The Guardian 2016 October issue article, “Law to cut sex-selective abortions in Armenia, ‘putting lives at risk,’” states that from the point of the elders, parallel to low pensions, the custom-based caretaker is considered to be the eldest son. Traditionally, the daughter’s family has the right to hinder her from caring for her family of orientation. So, if no boys are in the family, the chance of being left without care during their elder years rises drastically, which makes male generations more preferred. Similarly, the pressure from the elders’ side over the woman motivates women to strive to have male children to gain a well-respected position in a family, earn a guarantee for the future, and back down from the elders' as well as the husbands' discriminatory attitude.^[19]

According to the survey conducted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2012 with 2830 households throughout Armenia, the number of women who prefer to have a son is 2.7 times larger than those who prefer a daughter. In contrast, every second respondent (43.1%) had no gender preferences for a child. For the second child, given the cases when the first is a boy, although the selection was still given to boys, the number of women preferring a girl grew almost two-fold (32.2%).

One of the issues still present in Armenian society is cases when the decision is made under the influence of the family members rather than autonomously by the women who bear the child. The UNFPA data displays that from the 368 surveyed women, the decision to terminate the current pregnancy is taken by men and women separately, 47.1% for each, and 5.9% of the cases by Mother-in-Law. For the question of whether there was pressure from the family side related to the child’s gender, only two had not felt any pressure. Family preferences might also be considered a direct pressure on the sex-selection, especially given that son preference in families is six times higher than that for girls, with 64.7% and 11.8%, correspondingly.^[20]

The Recent Observations on Statistics of the Sex-selective Abortions

According to the 2008-2019 report of the Ministry of Health of RA, the rates of the sex ratio have been fluctuating yearly. This hints at the level of sex-selective abortions since there is a 'naturally curated' sex selection ratio of 105-100(1.05). To understand the change occurring yearly, it is imperative to consider the drastic contrast between the rate of 1.2 given for the 2000s and the recent years' statistics. The birth ratio given for 2015 was 1.13. The latter improved in 2017 with a rate of 1.10. During 2018, there was a regress with an observed rate of 1.11.

According to RA Statistical Committee, the 2020 ratio of child sex selection has been 1.04 for the first child, 0.07 for the second, and drastically higher, 1.27 for the third and fourth children. Although there is a positive development, especially in the case of the third child, given for 2020 with the contrasting rate of 1.40 for the preceding 2019, sex selection is an existing problem in Armenia. According to the data provided by the Ministry of Health of Armenia in 2023, the ratio of boy-girl births in Armenia has again faced disbalance with the 1.11 rate, which shows an obvious error related to sex-selective abortions in Armenia.^[18]

The 2017 UNFPA “Prevalence of and Reasons for Sex-Selective Abortions in Armenia” research also revealed the regional distinction between attitudes toward sex selection. The study showed a direct inclination toward the male sex for the first child in Ararat, Shirak, and Lori regions. In slight contrast, for Yerevan and Syunik regions, the gender of the first child was not biased.

Legislative Regulations

According to RA law for, the second part of the 10th article for “Human Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights” prescribes sex-selective abortions as prohibited after 12 weeks. Banning abortions for 12–22 weeks, when the gender of a child may be revealed, except for the medically assigned cases prescribed by the 8th part of the 10th article, was intended to stop sex-biased abortions. Unfortunately, regulatory measures are not fully efficient for such a complex problem for two reasons. First, the solution is not to regulate abortions since there is a chance of doing unregistered abortions. Secondly, the root of the problem is not sex-selective abortion but the social limits for the female gender.

According to the 2020 report of the RA Office of Human Rights, exploration of the regional cases exhibited two mechanisms for sex-selective abortions: medical and personal measures. The individual measures include abortion pills, namely Mifepristone, and specific traditional measures, which are not regulated by law. In slight contrast, medical abortions, despite being held by law, are considered to be conducted unlawfully. The exploration shows that there are no registered cases of abortion in smaller regional hospitals, which makes the officials assume that the latters are conducted without an authorized record.^[18]

Finding a solution will be complicated since the problem has latent edges. Besides legislative regulations, measures to enhance and elevate the female rights and societal role is essential. Ani Jilozian, a Women’s Support Centre member in Yerevan, calls the legislative intervention a “band-aid solution” rather than a fundamental remedy to traditional bias. Similarly, Lara Aharonian, the co-founder of the Women’s Resource Centre Armenia (WRCA), states that the problem should have been solved in a broader social context of gender inequality nurtured since childhood and female socioeconomic condition rather than regulations, which directly enhance the rates of unsafe abortions.^[21] Also, according to the World Bank 2015 Report “Exploring the “Phenomenon of Missing Girls” in South Caucasus states, measures for gender equality promotion should include increased female pressure-related resilience through economic empowerment, asset and agency access, safety, and social protection tools.^[22]

The Campaign to Urge to Stop Selective Abortions My Name is Enough

The name "Enough, Armenian:Բավական” apart from the Armenian lexical meaning enough, is also an Armenian female name. Statistically, families who wanted a boy, eventually, after their third girl, name her “Բավական” to signify that it is enough for them with girls. The namesake campaign "My Name is Enough" was produced to highlight the issue of sex-selective abortions, ranking Armenia in third place for frequency of sex-selective abortions among nations based on UN data. The campaign was produced by Doping Creative Agency in cooperation with the RA Ministry of Health and funded by the Armenia office of the United Nations Population Fund. ^[23] The non-commercial campaign was begun on 11 October 2019, with the symbolic onset of the red lighting effect around the statue of “Mother Armenia.” The statue “Mother Armenia” is not only a military symbol but also an icon signifying the role and collective essence of the Armenian Woman. Red coloring symbolized the sense of terror or the “STOP” sign. In complementarity, these two symbols state the need to stop the practice of sex-based abortions based on traditional and social bias, considering the true essence of an Armenian woman.^[24]

International Recognition

The campaign won awards and enhanced international recognition at several Festivals. During Kyiv International Advertising Festival, Doping Creative Agency won two gold awards in the “Out of home” and Advertising Campaign categories and a silver in the Media category. Further, at the 20th "Silver Mercury" International Festival “My Name Is Enough" social campaign won the highest silver award in the Social Advertising and Charity category. Similarly, at the International "Red Apple" advertising festival, “My Name Is Enough" won one gold and two bronze awards.^[25]

• Health in Armenia
• Women in Armenia