Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said a new bill would tackle the “ideology of childlessness.”

Russia’s fight against the West and its values has taken aim this week at an “ideology” that the Kremlin and its allies say threatens the country’s very foundations: people not wanting to have children.

Lawmakers have proposed a ban on “propaganda of conscious refusal to bear children,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday.

It is the latest effort by authorities to combat the demographic strain of falling birth rates, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin says could threaten the country’s long-term outlook. In July, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Russia’s declining birth rate “catastrophic for the future of the nation.”