November 22, 2023
University of North Carolina Anthropologist and Associate Professor, Michele Rivkin-Fish, PhD, was recently cited in an ABCNews article for her expertise on the conditions of Russian abortion clinics and the government’s increasingly pro-natalist policies. The article, titled “From Stalin to Putin, abortion has had a complicated history in Russia,” detailed changes in Russia’s abortion and contraception policies since Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s death. According to author Dasha Litvinova, this recent wave of socially conservative abortion policies is due in part to domestic fears over Russia’s declining population and President Vladimir Putin’s embracing of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Since 1993, Rivkin-Fish has examined Russian healthcare reforms, debates, and policies on reproduction and demography. Her book Women’s Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention, explored feminist and medical anthropological scholarship linking politics with transformations of the state and citizenship. Rivkin-Fish joined the UNC Department of Anthropology in 2006.