The Bashkir legislature and Elvira Aitkulova, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, have submitted a bill to the State Duma banning the spread of propaganda of voluntary child abandonment among minors. The document was posted in the Duma's electronic database on Monday, reported TASS.

An amendment to the law on the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development was proposed. As noted in the explanatory note, "supporters of the ideology of "Childfree" spread ideas that form the basis of destructive social behavior based on the voluntary refusal to have children, which runs counter to traditional family values and state policy of the Russian Federation."

"Thus, in the existing conditions the propaganda of conscious childlessness, carried out by the activists of the "Childfree" movement, leads to the degradation of social institutions, the washout of traditional values and forms circumstances for the depopulation of the population," the authors of the initiative believe.