Yelena Mizulina

Yelena Mizulina (born December 9, 1954) is a Russian professor, lawyer and politician. She was a member of the Russian Parliament between 1995 and 2003. Beginning in 2007, Mizulina became a member again. She later became the chairperson of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs.

Due to the Crimean crisis, Mizulina was punished by Canada, the United States and Western Europe.

Legislative work

Mizulina was involved with a number of controversial legislative projects. Those included:

• 2010 bill on On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development
• 2012 Internet Restriction Bill.
• Future changes to the bill On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development that would block all websites containing swearing and the usage of the Russian word mat. People who were against the Internet Restriction Bill stressed that although it sounded like the bill would protect children, it provides overwhelming tools for Internet censorship and a limit on freedom of speech in Russia. This protest led to public complaints, like the Russian-language Wikipedia strike. On June 10, 2012, she incriminated foreign intervention in these protests and therefore, she announced that she would issue an inquiry to the ministry of justice of the USA. She also said the Internet protests were organized by a "pedophile lobby".
• 2013 Anti-Magnitsky bill denying Americans the right to adopt Russian children. Following this proposal, U.S. authorities responded by proposing to include Mizulina, along with Vitaly Milonov under the Magnitsky list of banned Russian personalities.
• 2014 bill preventing women from entering higher education before giving birth.
• 2017 bill to decriminalise domestic violence "first assaults which cause less serious injuries" to an administrative offence.

Views toward marriage, sexual relations and family

Mizulina believes in limiting women's rights to abortion. She pledged to let abortions remain free of charge only under medical reasons or cases involving rape. In all other cases, she believed abortions should be billed to the women seeking such treatments.

Mizulina led an effort to decriminalize domestic violence in Russia. In 2016, she told reporters: "A man beating his wife is less offensive than when a man is humiliated."

Mizulina had strong opinions and views toward United States citizens adopting Russian children. She voted for the Anti-Magnitsky bill. The bill forbids when people in and from the United States adopt Russian children.

Mizulina is against homosexuality and LGBT rights. She is the author for some legislative projects that are directed against "the propaganda of homosexuality." They include the Russian gay propaganda law. She believes the phrase "gays are people too" should be marked as extremist by the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare. Mizulina was also in favor of taking children from gay parents, even biological parents. In June 2012, Mizulina and the Duma Committee put into public a project called "The State Concept of Family Policy Until 2025". This policy proposed several controversial elements. They include:

• does not tolerate out of wedlock child-birth
• proposes new restrictions on abortion
• strongly goes agains homosexuality
• proposes to strengthen the role of the church in passing legislation relative to family matters
• to increase the number of multi-generational families (families where grandparents, parents and grandchildren live together).
• recommends to actively advocate multiple births
• determines that minimum sum of child support, and proposes it be implemented independently of whether the parent has an income or not.

After the publication of "Concept", it was pointed out that several positions described in it were plagiarized word-for-word from a school report published in free access on the Internet. That in turn was plagiarized from a curriculum of family studies in Tomsk Polytechnic University.

In that same context, Mizulina called for the animated sitcom South Park to be removed from Russian airwaves.

The criticism toward Mizulina

Russian political scientist Mark Urnov described laws set in motion by Mizulina as "diverse, but having a single common quality – their capacity to spread intolerance. They are simply a legal expression of the intolerance and the suppression of everything that corresponds to one's personal views in regard to what is right and wrong".

The writer Dmitri Bykov believed Mizulina was "constantly providing a legislative form for things that should remain a question of personal choice, which is far more dangerous than any gay pride parade".

In April 2019, Mizulina was widely quoted for her statements in defense of the Russian Internet censorship laws. Her statements were condemned as Orwellian by several journalists.