Officials promote earlier marriage, note decrease in abortions

October 10, Pozirk. Officials and the Belarusian National Youth Union (BNYU) will join their efforts to encourage young people to marry earlier and become parents, Social Security Minister Valeryj Kavalkoŭ has told reporters in Minsk.

Surveys show that if a woman becomes a mother at 20–25, there is a 70–75-percent chance that “she will have the second and the third child,” Kavalkoŭ said. But if she gives birth at 35, she is unlikely to have a second and a third child.

Over the past 10 years, the average age of first-time mothers rose by more than three years to 27 at the end of 2023, the minister said.

BNYU Secretary Vieranika Hudkova supported what she described as traditional family values.

“We call on our young people to marry, to have children, to start families because demographic security is one of the foundations of Belarusian society,” she said.

Officials at the press conference also discussed abortion.

Doctors terminated 21,200 pregnancies in 2019 and 15,800 in 2023, according to the National Statistical Committee (Biełstat).

In recent years, Belarusian officials have often talk about what they call traditional values, criticizing Western values. The trend came from Russia, where officials banned foreigners from adopting children, introduced fines for abortion promotion and plan to ban the “child-free” ideology.

In December 2022, Council of the Republic Chairwoman Natalla Kačanava announced a bill to ban “LGBT propaganda,” citing Russian experience, as well as “family traditions and orthodoxy.” But legislation has not been drafted yet.

In February 2024, Prosecutor General Andrej Švied said that lawmakers drafted a bill to punish those caught promoting “nontraditional family relations” under the Code of Administrative Offenses.