Russia is one of the few countries in the world where the number of abortions outnumber the number of live births.
For example in 2001, 1,320,000 children were born in Russia, while 1,800,000 abortions were performed.
These figures are especially tragic given that Russia is facing a disasterous demographic crisis with the UN estimating that Russia could lose more then half of its population by 2050.
One of the strange thing about coming from the US and living in Russia is the complete night and day difference in attitudes towards abortion. In the US there seems to be a real political militancy on both sides of the issue.
But in Russia there is ZERO public controversy over this issue.
I have personally never seen this issue politicized or protested in any way. In fact abortions are usually only refered to as an “operation” that happens in the event of an accidental pregnancy.
This is a complicated issue and I can only guess that the lack of public outcry over it is in no small part due to the Communists banning religion during Soviet times. Since mainstream religions universally condemn abortion as the gravest sin then the strict elimination of these moral boundaries combined with the nearly free and on-demand access of abortions to all women at the start of the USSR has certainly contributed to this current situation.
Russian Women are already strictly private about their relationship, sex or health issues so you will never hear about an abortion on a personal level.
But on the flip side since my time here I’ve known of several young women who became pregnant by their boyfriends and decided to keep their babies and try to make the best of it by getting married.
One of these girls was a good platonic friend of mine who just delievered her baby 2 months ago. She and her new husband are both around 20 years old. When she was still dating this young man she told me that if she ever got pregnant she would never get an abortion because of her beliefs. More importantly.. her mother would never approve of it and would absolutely insist that she keep her baby.
I personally believe that there is a growing number of ladies in this country who share the same attitude as my friend. The Russian Orthodox Church has regained it’s once proud status in this country. And as you will read about in the following article other Russian Women are coming forward to counsel other women on the full facts of their decision to get an abortion.
Abortion foes begin to make their case in Russia
Doctors and politicians are quietly struggling to change the nation’s casual attitude toward the procedure.
By Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2008
MOSCOW — Abortionist Marina Chechneva remembers the old-style Russian gynecologists who worked in state hospitals and churned out back-to-back abortions like Soviet factory workers. She remembers the women who “used to use abortion as a kind of vacation, because in the U.S.S.R., they got three days off from work.”
These days, Chechneva is writing magazine articles about fetus development in hope of raising public opposition to abortion. After years of handling fetuses, she explains, she has come to feel a responsibility toward the unborn children.
“They should realize that what they’re doing is already a murder,” she said.
A fledgling antiabortion movement is beginning to stir in Russia. Driven by a growing discussion of abortion as a moral issue and, most of all, by a government worried about demographics, doctors and politicians are quietly struggling to lower what is believed to be one of the world’s highest abortion rates.
“The attitude has changed,” abortion practitioner Alexander Medvedev said. “Even in community clinics, doctors are trying to dissuade patients from abortion. Now teenagers come to see us with already two or three abortions, and it’s horrible.”
It’s an uphill struggle. Doctors complain that contraceptive use remains unpopular and that many Russian women rely on abortion for birth control.
The government is desperate to persuade citizens to bear more children. Russians are dying faster than they’re being born, a trend that has emerged as one of the most serious challenges faced by this sprawling, scantily populated land.
The discussion is devoid of terms such as “pro-life” or “pro-choice.” From doctors to patients to officials, nobody seems to consider seriously the possibility of outlawing abortion. But the government recently imposed new restrictions on the procedures after the 12th week of pregnancy, and toughened the language of a waiver that Russian women must sign before terminating a pregnancy.
Late-term abortions used to be easily accessible on “social” grounds: A woman merely had to visit a social worker, complain that she wouldn’t be able to raise a child, and she could collect a stamped waiver. These days, exceptions are available only for extreme circumstances, such as the sudden death of a husband or a medical emergency.
In 2007, for the first time in decades, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service counted slightly more live births than abortions in Russia. But doctors say those statistics are flawed because of the growing number of women who opt for undocumented abortions in private clinics.
Legal system aside, many gynecologists have launched their own small efforts to persuade patients to go through with their pregnancies. Although Russian law requires parental consent only for girls younger than 16, many doctors boast that they involve the parents of any patient younger than 19.
“This is the decision of a lifetime,” gynecologist Natalia Smirnova said. “It’s very important for me to show them the ultrasound picture of their fetuses. This stops most of them.”
Speaking in her private clinic while women in their 20s filled the waiting room outside, Smirnova pointed to pictures of fetuses taped to her office walls and described the conversation she holds with a would-be abortion patient.
“I ask her to please explain to me and give me the reasons why she can’t preserve her pregnancy. I’m not satisfied with, ‘I’m afraid.’ I want to hear the whole story. ‘What did the father-to-be tell you, what did your mother say?’ There were cases when I myself called her mother in another town. By appealing to her mother, her partner, the future father, you can often succeed in making her change her decision and preserve her pregnancy.”
Women interviewed for this article spoke wistfully, even painfully — but with an underlying grain of pragmatism — about the decision to end their pregnancies. Mostly sheltered from public or political discussions of abortion, they tended to describe the procedure as a medical decision that had surprising personal aftershocks.
“You kill not only a child, a living being, but a part of yourself, something that was alive in you,” said Irina, a 25-year-old Muscovite who has had three abortions. The young women who were interviewed declined to give their last names. “There’s a trauma and a grief you suffer. You murder a child. It was much more difficult than I expected.”
Still, Irina repeatedly chose abortion when she felt she was without options — unemployed despite her university degree in accounting, married to first one man and then another who didn’t want the babies. She never used birth control. She became pregnant, then went to the state clinic and waited in line for a no-cost abortion.
“It’s like a conveyor belt,” she said. “Women sit next to the abortion room in a line, and it happens very quickly.”
It shouldn’t be so casual, Russian lawmakers contend.
“The spiritual position,” said Natalia Karpovich, a leader of the State Duma committee focused on family, women and children, “should be that this is murder and the woman who does this commits a sin. Still, I want to stress it’s a woman’s choice.”
Karpovich is among Russian lawmakers who’ve pushed for media messages casting abortion in a less neutral light. She also supports new measures meant to encourage childbirth by paying out cash bonuses and opening new day-care centers across the country.
“Like on packs of cigarettes or bottles of alcohol, advertisements for abortion services should be obligated to warn about the consequences,” she said.
“That they may result in infertility, that some bad changes may happen in the female organism.”
Summer rain fell over the streets, and Karpovich was holding court in an expensive cafe near the Kremlin, flitting from table to table in a series of quick meetings. Her fingers flashed with diamonds; her body was swathed in a Pucci-style dress. She herself, she pointed out, was expecting her fifth child.
“As a Russian woman and mother, I feel the presence of the state, that my child has a future, that my country needs me as a mother and needs my child,” she said, smiling serenely.
“The economic development of Russia has led us away from the priority of building a family and gave a serious boost to abortion.”
But working women, many of whom came of age during the financial mayhem of the 1990s, complain that massive cash inflows generated by oil haven’t trickled down fast enough. They simply can’t afford to contemplate childbirth, they say.
“It works like this: The first priority is to get a career, then an apartment, then a car,” said Yulia, a 21-year-old secretary at a sewage company and a dead ringer for Scarlett Johansson. “Then all of a sudden it’s too late to have children, and this is torturing you the whole time.”
Last year, Yulia found out during a routine physical that she was eight weeks pregnant. “The guy I was dating was totally against having children, and I didn’t want to have a child with him, specifically,” she said. “It’s so easy these days. You can just go do it, and nobody thinks about it.”
After the abortion, nothing changed. She stayed with her boyfriend, and off contraception. Six months later, she was pregnant again. That time, her doctor told her she couldn’t have another abortion so soon. So she found a private clinic and a doctor with fewer qualms.
“In the past, it was easier to raise kids. Despite all the shortages, everything was so cheap and there were a lot of free services,” she said ruefully, with a shrug.
“I know I have a duty before my country, but I think my duty to myself is stronger. You don’t give birth to a child just to continue the line.”
(you can read the original article here)
September 25, 2008 at 12:48 am
I’ve known about this for quite some time. I rememeber hearing statistics along the lines of many women over there having mulitple abortions over the course of their lives, most getting up into the teens in terms of numbers. It just became the de-facto form of birth control in Russia which was another reason there has been very little out-cry about it.
September 25, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Wow,I had no idea; that is so sad. I once had a friend that had an abortion because the baby’s father to be said he didn’t want it. So she did it because she loved him. She ended up saying it was the worse thing she had ever done and that she wished that she could change it. I have never felt so bad for someone in my life as she sat there on my bed, crying as she told me about all the feelings that she was still having a year later and how much guilt that she had. Needless to say the guy turned out to be no one special so that made it even harder on her seeing how she had done this for him.
September 25, 2008 at 2:37 pm
How tragic.
September 25, 2008 at 7:39 pm
That’s a good point Dale. I read about one woman in Texas who has had several abortions and is now actively counseling women who have also undergone them because of the grief and emotional pain that they have to deal with in regards to it.
There’s a growing movement of people who are looking at Abortion as a mental health crisis for Women who undergo them.
September 25, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Good to see the clear bottom line on abortion and its effect presented here. In the ultraliberal west, of course, it is entirely a political issue focused on “a woman’s right” to choose killing innocents. Not many except for the religious right wing element ever speak to the mental and emotional damage done by this “choice”. It takes a pretty cold individual to kill a human without remorse and of those who do the eventual realization often sends them over the edge. Yet we are being told to believe that any promiscuous young girl is able to repeatedly snuff out human life and be somehow, magically unaffected by it all. The slutty behavior is an indicator of an emotionally disturbed mind and then free reign to kill fetuses is supposed to release these girls from their guilt? In what fantasy world could that take place?
When an old girl friend of mine called to get a ride one day long ago she had me pick her up at a seemingly odd location. It was an abortion clinic and she was totally distraught when I got there. I spent several days with her and I was also dealing with the process she was going through. I was not the would be father or anything and the actual father had no more to do with her once he found out she was pregnant. It was a very traumatic event.
It hurts to think that many young women in the FSU are potentially using this “way out” rather than just searching for better situations.
September 26, 2008 at 8:54 am
Are birth control pills and patches free under the health system?
September 27, 2008 at 9:15 am
Hi Richard,
Families in Russia adopting children is virtually unheard of here so the only other option for pregnant women who don’t want to keep their children is to give them up at an orphanage. I think the story of your old girlfriend being traumatized is a pretty poignant story.
Fritz birth control pills are easily available here over the counter without prescription and they are very cheap as well.
But unfortunately abortions are still primarily seen as a quick fix with nearly non-existent public guilt over it.
September 27, 2008 at 10:09 pm
It isn’t just the “religious right-wing element” that speaks out against abortion. The Roman Catholic Church is far from right-wing, but has consistently opposed abortion. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church in all countries, including the USA, is also completely opposed to abortion, although it generally keeps a low profile politically.
Abortion as a form of “birth control” is definitely a holdover from Communist times in the FSU, and Orthodoxy is just now in a state to have any real influence over people; up to this point, it has itself been recovering from the ravages of Communism (just one being that priests paid *five times* the income-tax rate of ordinary Russians — kind of hard to keep up any kind of parish life when you’re shelling out 75% of your income in taxes). And the Church is not one to browbeat those who don’t take it seriously. But I suspect that as more and more women come to belief, they will gradually come to see for themselves how destructive abortion is, not just to the unborn child but also to its mother — and its father.
September 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Mrs. Mutton,
Sorry for any confusion in my statement regarding the most vocal NA opponents of abortion. I stand by my opinion based on my observations both inside and out of church and political circles throughout Western US and Canada over the last 25 years.
Depending on where you live, you might be hard pressed to find any open, public dissent on abortion that does not come from people (myself included) who are strong conservative, outspoken Christians and generally right wing politically.
The average, modern NA “church go-er” is predominately living under a “do it today and be forgiven tomorrow” frame of mind. While the leadership in most churches is strictly anti-abortion, the general populations in those congregations are post modernist. That is pretty much undeniable, statistically speaking. Over a third of Catholics in America are pro choice which is in direct violation of their doctrine and teaching. The further from that starting point you move, i.e. non-denominational, free, evangelical or whatever, the more liberal the perspective becomes. That includes political issues like national security, business ethics, etc. and certainly personal and spiritual points, too. The whole post modern movement suggests that “if all sin is forgiven I should sin more and let forgiveness abound”. Obviously that is not a sound spiritual point of view as per Paul’s letters to the Romans where he specifically addresses the subject.
When we can openly and freely discuss these things we are all better for the exchange. I hope that the worst to come of any of this is an agreement to disagree.
In regards to the actual point of where the abortion issue is heading, I only hope that little by little the young women of the world will increase their self image to a point of humility and dignity reminiscent of their grandmothers and great grandmothers. I feel it is only a posture of body purity and self respect that can remove the desire to ‘do whatever feels good’ now and pay for it later.
September 29, 2008 at 5:14 am
rw_man,
Do you know if the adoption of Russian children by westerners has relaxed any? While it was once a big part of the culture, it became very difficult for several years for people here to adopt children over there. I’m curious if those years of restriction are easing any in the current situation.
September 29, 2008 at 8:46 am
Hi Richard,
Unfortunately the adoption situation has become much more difficult in Russia. There is an active campaign it seems to show off negative stories in the US about Russian kids who have been adopted and then severely abused.
The adoption process is completely controlled by the state and has a reputation for being corrupt and also filled with scams.
I personally believe that the state has a preference for trying to keep healthy children in the country (because of demographic pressure) while letting go of disabled ones.
October 6, 2008 at 6:40 am
What they forgot to mention in the article is that even in communist era, doctors strongly insisted on not terminating your first pregnancy. And most women who had 2 or 3 or even 6 abortions already had one or 2 kids already.
October 6, 2008 at 10:42 am
Kisha, thanks for the insight on that important point.