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MOSCOW, May 22, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A prominent, conservative member of the Russian Duma has introduced two pro-life bills that would ban abortions in private clinics and restrict state medical coverage only to abortions required to save the life of the mother.

Yelena Mizulina has in the past sponsored bills preventing the adoption of children by homosexuals and by foreigners (who might be homosexuals), banning iPhones because they can download child pornography, and banning homosexual propaganda. The last bill caused the pro-homosexual Obama administration to freeze any U.S. assets she might have.

In defence of her two bills, Mizulina tweeted, “Free medical care programs are directed first of all towards saving lives and health of people. An abortion is not a medical or health-improving procedure and is not a strict necessity.”

The money saved by defunding would go to women in real need, she promised.

The reactions of pro-life advocates is mixed, partly because Mizulina is seen as a loose cannon, and partly because the bills are seen as having little chance of passage.

“The last pro-life bill got only 11 votes in the Duma,” Dmitry Baranov, president of Warriors for Life, told LifeSiteNews. The Duma, the Russian Federation’s lower chamber, has 450 members.

Baranov notes that Mizulina, who has switched political parties many times in the course of a two-decade-long career, once backed a bill that would have empowered the government to take control of the children of parents deemed inadequate.

She also gave tacit approval, in Baranov’s view, of a new law allowing courts to order abortions when the mother was mentally handicapped. Mizulina’s role was to offer amendments preventing the abortion if the child’s heartbeat could be heard or if the father refused consent.

Baranov questions Mizulina’s sincerity. “Why does she sponsor these bills?” he asked. He related a rumor that associates Mizulina with Yevgeny Yuriev and other Putin associates concerned with Russia’s “demographic” problem – a shrinking population caused in part by an abortion rate twice its birth rate.

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In this “version,” as Baranov puts it, Yuriev and others concerned about demographics put a high value on symbolic gestures without much or any force in law.

He said, though, that at least Mizulina’s bills keep the discussion of abortion and population alive.

“As for me,” said Baranov,” I don’t want laws that say how you can kill the unborn. I want a law to end the genocide.”