Abortion in Russia is legal as an elective procedure up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and in special circumstances at later stages. In 2009, Russia reported 1.2 million abortions, out of a population of 143 million people. In 2020, Russia had decreased its number of abortions to 450 thousand.

Following the takeover of Russia by the Bolsheviks, the Russian Soviet Republic under Vladimir Lenin became the first country in the world in the modern era to allow abortion in all circumstances in 1920. Over the course of the 20th century, the legality of abortion changed more than once, with a ban on unconditional abortions being enacted again from 1936 to 1955, after which it was legalised again. Due to this, the country developed a so-called "abortion culture". Russian abortions peaked in the mid-1960s with a total of 5,463,300 in 1965. In the Soviet Union's entire history from 1920 until 1991, over 260 million abortions took place, mostly in Russia.

Abortion was illegal in the Russian Empire. The practice is not directly referenced in the Domostroi, though child rearing is a common topic. During Tsar Alexis Romanov's reign the punishment for abortion was death, only later removed by Peter the Great. Abortion continued to be a serious crime until 1917. Through articles 1462 and 1463 of the Russian Penal Code individuals "guilty of the crime could be deprived of civil rights and exiled or sentenced to hard labor." Despite its illegality, "black market" abortions existed. Underground obstetric personnel known as povival'nye babki and sel'skie povival'nye babki, usually translated as midwives and rural midwives, respectively and commonly referred to as simply babki, literally "old women" and povitukhi (midwives) performed abortions. Not merely abortion providers, babki, were trained health care professionals—they served as nurses and midwives in especially rural areas where proper medical service was unavailable. The number of abortions increased in Moscow two-and-a-half times between 1909 and 1914; the increased frequency of abortions in St. Petersburg was many times higher over the turn of the century, 1897–1912. Statistical data from the beginning of the 20th century suggest that the strict laws were rarely enforced. For instance, figures for sentences pronounced during the years before the First World War include: 20 (1910), 28 (1911), 31 (1912), and 60 (1914).

In the late Russian Empire, doctors and jurists began to advocate for relaxed abortion laws and increased contraception. The motivation was to make abortions less dangerous. According to historians, the movement to legalize abortion and encourage contraception arose differently than it did in Western Europe. Rather than among the political scene (as in France, for example), proponents came from medical fields. In 1889 the Third Congress of the Pirogov Society, a medical scientific society whose works had a resounding influence in Russia, started the discussion on decriminalization of abortion. Others followed: in 1911 the Fourth Congress of the Society of Russian Midwives, in 1913 the Pirogov Society's Twelfth Congress, and in 1914 the Russian group of the International Society of Criminologists came forward supporting decriminalization.

The Soviet government was the first government in Europe to legalize abortion. In October 1920 the Bolsheviks made abortion legal within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with their "Decree on Women's Healthcare". After the RSFSR the law was introduced in Ukraine (5 July 1921) and then the remainder of the Soviet Union. The government saw legalization as a temporary necessity, as after the economic crisis and nearly a decade of unrest, war, revolution, and civil war, many women would be seeking abortions due to not being able to take care of their child. Restrictions were placed on the criteria for abortions and by 1924 it was only permitted where pregnancy risked the life of the woman or the unborn child. The Soviet Union encouraged pronatal policies; however, Soviet officials argued that women would be getting abortions regardless of legality, and the state would be able to regulate and control abortion only if it was legalized. In particular, the Soviet government hoped to provide access to abortion in a safe environment performed by a trained doctor instead of babki. While this campaign was extremely effective in the urban areas (as much as 75% of abortions in Moscow were performed in hospitals by 1925), it had much less on rural regions where there was neither access to doctors, transportation, or both and where women relied on traditional medicine. In the countryside in particular, women continued to see babki, midwives, hairdressers, nurses, and others for the procedure after abortion was legalized in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union, under Lenin, became the first country to have abortion available, on request, often for no cost. There was intense debate among government and medical officials surrounding its legalization. The main arguments used in opposition to legalizing abortion were that it would have a harmful effect on population growth or on the grounds that it was too medically harmful to the woman. By the mid-1920s, hospitals were so severely congested by abortion procedures that special clinics had to be opened to free up beds. The enormous rate of abortions being performed also caused many doctors to become concerned and restrictions started being passed to limit abortion after the third month of pregnancy and to ensure that priority was given only to women deemed too poor, single, or who already had several children. Only six months between a first abortion and a second abortion was permitted. In addition, renewed efforts were made to prosecute babki. This had first started with the legalization of abortion in 1920 and a fair number of babki were caught and punished as legal abortion gave them no excuse to continue operating. During the collectivization drives in the early 1930s, this was temporarily put on the back burner, but in 1934 new, stricter laws were passed on performing illegal abortions, and there was a circular of the RSFSR Procuracy and extensive stories on them in the major newspapers. The circular requested that regional prosecutors step up efforts to combat unsanctioned abortion, citing a letter submitted to the Procuracy by an anonymous private citizen decrying the harm done to women by babki in one rural district. A month later, Izvestiia ran a piece condemning "the plight of young women who ended up at the abortionist's doorstep after being unable to find employment."

On 27 June 1936, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union made abortion illegal again, stemming largely from concerns about population growth as well as concerns for the medical dangers of abortion. The law that outlawed abortion did not only do just that, but rather contained several different decrees. The official title of the law was, "Decree on the Prohibition of Abortions, the Improvement of Material Aid to Women in Childbirth, the Establishment of State Assistance to Parents of Large Families, and the Extension of the Network of Lying-in Homes, Nursery schools and Kindergartens, the Tightening-up of Criminal Punishment for the Non-payment of Alimony, and on Certain Modifications in Divorce Legislation". This law allowed abortion only in the case of a threat to a woman's health. All of this was part of the Soviet initiative to encourage population growth, as well as place a stronger emphasis on the importance of the family unit to communism.

The law coincided with a state-sponsored promotion of Circus (premiered on 25 May 1936, was postponed) depicting an American Catholic protagonist giving birth to a child she conceived with her African American lover, which was forbidden due to American anti-Black sentiments. At his meeting with the workers from the Stakhanovite movement, Stalin, who was closely following film as a strong source of propaganda, said: "We must finally understand that, of all the valuable capitals available in the world, the most valuable and decisive capital is the people". Just after that, America and Americans disappeared from Soviet cinema.^[relevant?]