March 27, the Standing Committee on Social and Health Care Affairs of the Youth Parliament together with the same committee of the NKR National Assembly organized a hearing on the topic “Abortion and legal restrictions”. Representatives of the spheres of the health sector, the prosecutor's office, church and public circles took part in the discussions.

Welcoming the participants of the discussion chairman of the NKR NA Standing Committee of on Social and Health Care Affairs Aram Grigoryan underlined the importance of the young partners’ initiatives.

A speech entitled "Induced abortion in terms of religion," was made by the representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Father Mesrop, who has underlined that the Church is strongly opposed to abortions.

In her turn the gynecologist Manushak Sargsyan briefly presented the reasons for abortions and recent year’s statistics underliningconsistent attitude of the doctors to clarify the true causes of abortion and their aspiration to discourage women from this step.

Touching upon the legislative regulation of the problem, representative of the Prosecutor General's Office of NKR Zoya Osipyan noted that according to the NKR Criminal Code carrying out illegal abortion is considered a crime.

A report on the social programs to encourage large families in Artsakh was made by Samvel Dadayan - Chief of the Office of Family and Children of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of NKR.

Highlighting the important role of NGOs in improving the demographic situation, head of the NGO «Artsakh Center for Youth Development " Susanna Petrosyan pointed to the problem of revaluation of moral and spiritual values of the society in the global context of the 21st century challenges. Head of «Artsakh Center for Youth Development " added that since 2009, the organization has been fighting against abortion and has implemented several programs in this direction.

Participants then discussed the attitude of society towards the problem.