January 7, 2008
A Russian province was holding a Conception Day in an effort to boost flagging birth rates.
September 12 is officially called Family Contact Day in the Ulyanovsk province, reports The Sun.
The day is about "encouraging procreation" and was the brainchild of the governor Sergei Morozov.
The event is timed precisely nine months ahead of Russia's next year's Constitution Day, so that mothers "ideally should give birth on June 12", said a spokeswoman for the administration.
Prizes ranging from a television to a Russian-made all-terrain vehicle will be given out to people who give birth on June 12.
A series of concerts and exhibitions were organised to promote family values and employers were encouraged to grant a discretionary day off, said the spokeswoman.
But local human rights activist Alexander Bragin complained: "We've already sunk to the level where the governor is ordering us on what day to conceive a child and on what day to give birth."
