Defending the Unborn.
The Moscow Times
9 Saturday, July 10,1999
In a country where many woman have had multiple abortions and pregnancies may be legally terminated until the sixth month, Russia's homeffown pro-life movement is facing an uphill battle. Slowly but surely, they are taking their message — that abortion is murder — to the masses. Andrei Zolotov Jr. reports.
Standing before a classroom of 16-year-old girls, Yelena Uteshinskaya held up a rubber model of a fetus and began her lecture entitled "Life. Death. Love."
"When did your life start?" Uteshinskaya asked her audience, whose responses were split between the moment of birth and the moment of conception. Uteshinskaya set out to prove the latter. "From the very first moment of conception, you had an absolutely unique set of DNA unlike anybody else's," she said. "You are alive because your parents made the right decisions."
Uteshinskaya popped a video into the VCR. Her young yiewers watched with fascination as images of a 10-week-old fetus jumped inside his mother's womb and appeared to wave.
Uteshinskaya then popped a second video into the machine, this time warning the girls that what they were about to see was very disturbing, and that they may feel the need to leave the room.
The video, entitled "Hard Truth," is shocking indeed, showing the dismembered bits of a fetus after a late-term abortion: Here is a piece of leg; there is a piece of head thrown into a medical vessel. Some girls started to cry; others covered their faces with their hands.
The film is one of the strongest weapons used by Russia's fledgling pro-life movement, of which Uteshinskaya is a member. Born in the early 1990s by a collection of religious activists from different Christian faiths, the movement has started to take shape over the past several years to counter the perception still dominant in post-Soviet society that abortion is a perhaps unpleasant, but normal procedure.
Abortion statistics in Russia are alarming. Official statistics indicate that around 3 million state-funded abortions are performed each year. This figure does not reflect the many abortions that are never reported. According to pro-life activists, the average Russian woman has between four and ten abortions in her lifetime.
The abortion problem in Russia is not new. Back in 1920 the Soviet Union was the first country to legalize the operation, and — aside from a few years during the Stalin era when it was banned in order to boost the population — it became a means of birth control for three generations of women who did not have access to contraception.
But unlike the situation in the United States, where a heavily politicized and at times violent pro-life movement has turned abortion into a central political issue, the Russian movement has not been able to seriously raise the issue of outlawing abortion. Indeed, only three years ago Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed a resolution which legalized late abortions for "social reasons." Under Russian law first trimester abortions are legal, but the amendment allows women up to their 24th week of pregnancy to seek a state-paid abortion if she is unmarried, or does not have an apartment; if either she or her husband are unemployed, or one of them has an income below the poverty line; if her husband dies during the pregnancy; if she already has three or more children; if she or her husband is in prison; if she has refugee status; if the pregnancy is the result of rape; if there is already a disabled child in the family; or if the pregnancy threatens the mother's health. Given this all-encompassing list, pro-life activists argue there are practically no legal limitations to having a late abortion in Russia, where, according to a recent survey in Ona magazine, more than half of the women who terminate pregnancies do so for economic reasons.
It seems paradoxical that the Russian Orthodox Church, whose teachings uncompromisingly condemn abortion as murder, is not crying out about the problem. Patriarch Alexy II has not made any high-profile statements on the matter.
The reason for the church's silence are twofold. First, abortion became a government policy in Russia at a time when the church was severely persecuted and internal preservation was its main — and only — task. That is why it has not developed a social doctrine in the same way as the Roman Catholic and other Western churches did. Indeed, the church has little experience dealing with the issue. The pre-revolutionary textbook on pastoral theology has no mention of how a priest should deal with a parishioner who has had an abortion — so abnormal were these cases. Today, when women confess they have had an abortion before they found religion, they are not given any punishment. "The very fact that she realized it as a sin is enough," said Maxim Obukhov, a Russian Orthodox priest and active pro-life campaigner.
Second, if the church were to condemn every woman who confessed to an abortion, they would be alienating the very people they are trying to lure back to the faith. Today, the vast majority of women in Russia have had an abortion. Condemning them all as grave sinners would divert millions of Russians— men and women — from joining the church and thus, from a Christian perspective, from repentance and salvation.
"It is a difficult subject for our church," said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the spokesman of the Moscow Patriarchate. He explained that while "the Orthodox Church has always condemned and will condemn abortion" in moral terms, it does not have a formulated position on the public aspects of the matter, mainly on government policies regarding abortion.
"The debate in most [foreign] societies is usually not on how churches themselves see abortions, but on how the state sees abortion," Chaplin said. "Can abortions be done on taxpayers money? I think not. Can late term abortions be done? I think not." However, as more priests and laymen speak out on the matter, the church will, sooner or later, establish a public policy on abortion, he said.
The movement is indeed growing, fueled by the efforts of Western pro-life groups that set up shop here in the early 1990s. Two large American-based pro- life groups — Human Life International and National Right to Life — did have Moscow branches for a brief period, but Russian right-to-lifers say they left after campaign funds were misappropriated by the organizations' Russian partners. Now the two groups occasionally fund anti-abortion projects in Russia from abroad.
However brief their presence was, the Western groups succeeded in planting the seeds of a grassroots anti- abortion movement in Russia, which emerged in 1992 and 1993. One way or the other, all of Russia's pro-life activists got their tips from the West.
One of the most prominent Russian groups is the Orthodox Christian Medical Enlightenment Center "Zhizn," which is part of one of Moscow's largest socially-active Orthodox parishes. Led by Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov, the parish runs four churches in northern Moscow, a Sunday school, a sisterhood working in two hospitals, and an iconography studio.
"I know the children who were not supposed to be born," said the young Obukhov, who runs Zhizn, or Life. With ten core activists and about 100 volunteers, Zhizn distributes anti-abortion literature, audio and video cassettes, and even plastic bags depicting a fetus in utero with the words: "Unborn babies ask for our love and protection." Obukhov has also put his message on the Internet. Zhizn's website
(http://www.zhizn.orthodoxy.ru) features the icon of the 14,000 Holy Infants Murdered by Herod in Bethlehem — an increasingly frequent fixture in Russian Orthodox churches before which women who have had an abortion pray for the souls of their lost children.
Uteshinskaya, who takes her message to the schools, came to the pro-life movement through a different route. Having worked as an interpreter for a Christian missionary in 1993, she translated two American films, "I Witness the Earliest Days of Life," and "Hard Truth," into Russian.
"Sevgra^generations of people, for whom abortion is the norm of life, have been brought up already in our country. If people are brought up that way, they see it as a norm" said Uteshinskaya, who now runs Rosa Zhizni, or Dew of Life, a pro-life group associated with the evangelical Charismatic Christian Church "Rosa." There are so few of these activists that they all know each other, and, in a rare case of cooperation across confessional lines, exchange information and occasionally work together on bigger projects. Unlike their Western counterparts, none of them are seeking to ban abortions altogether — so unrealistic would that goal be in Russia. All say their prime goal is educating people by targeting doctors, schools, and gynecological clinics, where, if they have secured the permission of the head doctor, they display their literature. They would also like to have greater access to the media to distribute their message, but most activists complain that the press is not open to pro-life topics. Indeed, Russian activists accuse journalists of propagating promiscuity and safe sex, and thus multiplying abortions. "Everybody says 'Why is the church silent?"' said Smirnov. "They dont let the church views [on television] and do not print [in newspapers]."
"Our main goal is to save the children," said Smirnov, adding that teenagers are subject to the libertine propaganda of the media and sex education programs which preach a safe-sex mentality that, he says, can only lead to an earlier sex life.
Russia's pro-life movement has one common enemy — the Russian Family Planning Association, or RFPA, a branch of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation — which they accuse of lobbying the government to expand abortion practices. Pro-lifers say that against such a powerful organization, they feel like a handful of warriors fighting an uphill battle.
RFPA, headed by legislator Yekaterina Lakhova, head of the Women of Russia faction in the State Duma, enjoys close contacts with the Health Ministry, which it helped to draft a federal program on contraception. Anti-abortion activists claim that as long as the "pro-abortion" lobby is funded from the coffers of pharmaceutical giants and medical companies making billions of dollars on contraceptive imports and abortions, the pro-life movement has no hope of gaining influence inside the government's health and education ministries.
"No one is going to listen to us there," Obukhov said. "The interests of the Christian population are in direct confrontation with the financial interests of the contraception industry. They created a lobby in the Health Ministry, and our arguments do not stand a chance against their money."
The movement's attacks on the RFPA were countered by the organization's executive director, Inga Grebesheva. "These are special actions of organizations that would like all our women to die of abortions," said Grebesheva, referring to the countless women who died or were rendered infertile by botched abortions when the practice was illegal and was performed underground.
Without governmental support, pro-lifers usually opt for a non-confrontational, often clandestine approach to their anti-abortion campaigns. Uteshinskaya, for example, said that her lectures are usually arranged through some Christians working inside the school. The administration may give its silent consent, but they are wary of any publicity.
"The official ideology in our country is the ideology of abortions," Uteshinskaya said. "So we try not to advertise what we do in schools."
The pro-lifers are optimistic that their efforts to educate the masses have not been in vain. "The situation is changing," Smirnov said. "There is even a certain optimism about doctors, some of whom are changing their views on abortion."
Smirnov also credited the pro-life movement with the 26 percent drop in the abortion rate in recent years. According to Health Ministry statistics, abortions fell from 3.4 million in 1993 to 2.47 million in 1998.
The RFPA, however, says that the reason for the decline is directly related to the increased availability of contraceptives and safe sex campaigns. Grebesheva notes that the decline in abortions began the same year that the Federal Family Planning Program, which her organization helped draft, went into action. The program, launched in 1993, provided subsidized — and in some cases free — contraceptives.
But ever since the program was slashed last year by the Duma, Grebesheva worries that abortion rates will rise again. Contraception — which costs between 50 to 150 rubles a month — may become a luxury that many women can't afford, she said.
The fact that the Duma shot down the family planning program is a sign that the pro-life movement is gaining some influence — especially among nationalists in parliament who are alarmed by Russia's declining population, which continues to shrink every year.
Last year, when the parliament considered the 1998 state budget, it was with the help of the pro-life movement that deputies cancelled the family planning program. Deputy speaker Sergei Baburiii sanctioned the distribution of a leaflet written by pioneer pro-life activist Olga Selekhova that criticized the RFPA and the program. As a result, the program, which allocated government funds to import contraceptives and equipment for family planning centers, was scratched from the budget.
Angered by the defeat of the program, Grebesheva contends that the pro-life movement is constantly misrepresenting the RFPA's interests.
"Where do I say that abortion is a norm? Nowhere! Our position is that abortion is profound psychological stress for a woman which can also have dreadful consequences for her health - ,. Grebesheva said. "That is why a woman should have access to birth control."
But the pro-life movement is not only against abortion, it is against contraception as well. They believe that contraception — rather than reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus the abortion rate, as the International Planned Parenthood Federation contends — only increases the number of abortions. If these methods fail and a woman gets pregnant, she is more likely to terminate the fetus, they say. Furthermore, hormonal contraceptives such as birth control pills, they say, havea dual function: in tl/e event the pill does not prevent conception, it creates a hormonal cocktail that will kill the fetus.
This theory is universally rejected by medical experts, who say that in the rare event that ovulation occurs and an egg is fertilized, the pill does not kill the embryo. What it does is create an environment within the uterus that makes it difficult for the fertilized egg to implant itself in the uterine wall. This, however, can happen with women who are not on the pill, doctors say.
Only crazy people can say that contraception leads to an increase of abortions and that condoms do not protect you from venereal disease," Grebesheva countered in response to the pro-life propaganda. "At the same time, nobody cares that syphilis has spread dramatically among teenagers."
They may not be crazy, but some right-to-lifers have been known to act irrationally, German Sterligov, the founder of the ulltraconservative group Word and Deed — a name based on the 17th-century system of political interrogation — is among those who resort to intimidation techniques. Sterligov rose to national prominence as the founder of Russia's first widely-advertised commodity exchange. Alisa, when he was in his early 20s. But in more recent years the extravagant young entrepreneur has become an arch-traditionalist with political ambitions. The right-to-life campaign has become his flagship issue.
His organization was responsible for the printing—and illegal distribution—of a series of anti-abortion posters. One featured the head of a baby shattered into pieces with a caption that read: "Abortion is Legitimized Murder."
"Orthodox believers!" Sterligov wrote in an appeal which was distributed in print and by e-mail. "If, in a school or club, preachers of corruption appear with their sex education, immediately report to our pager.... The rapid reaction group Word and Deed will come to the noted address and will stop the seducers and perverts."According to Sterligov, the "rapid reaction group" — an assortment of hulking men—has been called into action several times. Their presence is enough to scare sex education workers into giving up their activities, he said.
"There is usually no one there to hit in the face," Sterligov said. "Usually five big husky guys come and see two or three hysterical women about to have heart attacks."
However, Sterligov is not typical of pro-life activists, who tend to take a less aggressive approach. As a rule, the fledgling pro-life movement in Russia is not as confrontational as it is in the U.S. and Canada, where in recent years seven abortion providers have been murdered by extremists. Abortion clinics throughout NorthAmerica have also been the target of bombings and harassment by right-to-lifers.
"The Orthodox spirit presumes that you approach a person with love," said Andrei Polyakov, an activist with Zhizn. "If you start pushing, it will have an opposite effect."
Back in the classroom, Uteshinskaya continued to plug her message, having captured the attention of her young audience with the graphic video, "Hard Truth." Before the end of the class, she advocates abstinence, warning that no form of contraception is a }00 percent guarantee against pregnancy.
"Everybody aspires to love, and I am telling you this so that you do not get into a trap which can smell of a very good Cologne," she said in closing. "There is a Person who loves you always and unconditionally. He has left us a letter of love, which is called the Bible."
As the girls file out of the classroom — many of them still teary-eyed — Uteshinskaya and her colleagues pass out leaflets entitled, "Sex out of wedlock—Why You Shouldn't" and "How to say 'No' without losing his/her love." Not everyone was swayed by the film. "And what if he is unwanted, this baby? It is better to have an abortion than give him out to an orphanage," said Anya Spiridonova. "It is better to let it die sooner than suffer."
But Lena Samsonova, her eyes still red from crying, did not agree. "I looked at it, and I am shocked. It is horrible!" Lena's words were echoed by her classmate, Sveta Belogiazova. "It should not be the norm," she said.