principled position
In recent months, officials and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia have increasingly talked about possible restrictions on abortion. They can no longer be performed in private clinics in Crimea. Some medical institutions in Moscow also refuse to perform abortion procedures. Therefore, in the network of multidisciplinary medical centers “Fomina Clinic” such a procedure is not provided in principle.
“We know of numerous unscrupulous players who carry out abortion procedures with violations, including violation of the seven-day silence. In contrast, most market players handle this as responsibly as possible.
However, our clinic network does not terminate a pregnancy if the fetal heart is beating. Except in cases where a 100% aborted pregnancy is confirmed. “This is our principled position in every city, in every clinic,” the network’s founder Dmitry Fomin told socialbites.ca.
The list of regions that partially restrict abortion has expanded significantly. Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Anna Kuznetsova statedWhat at least 10 Some regions of Russia are working to ban abortion in private clinics, and such practices will increase further in the future.
The initiative is explained by the fact that such clinics do not comply with the law: they do not keep statistics on abortion and do not observe the “week of silence”, which is given to a woman to think about her decision. Moreover, the competence of experts who perform abortions is also questioned. Therefore, according to supporters of the initiative, this ban will help women avoid complications after abortion and perform the procedure “correctly”.
Corruption, secret abortion and harm to women
However, obstetrician-gynecologist, public health expert, World Health Organization expert Lyubov Erofeeva is sure that restricting a woman’s right to an abortion can lead to disastrous consequences: an increase in corruption, a large number of secret abortions and a deterioration in the psychological and physical condition of women.
“If we restrict the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, we worsen its psychological and physical condition. Imagine: there were five private and four public clinics in your city. These five clinics were then blocked from providing medical abortion services, and the women went to public clinics. There are queues, the woman wants to have an abortion at six or seven weeks, but she has to wait another week or two, this does not take into account the weeks of silence.
We know that the longer the duration, the higher the risk of complications. Will this make her think and the pregnancy to continue? Of course not. She will still have an abortion. You have to understand the psychology of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy,” Erofeeva explained to socialbites.ca.
An attempt was also made to reduce the duration of pregnancy termination from 12 weeks to eight weeks. According to Erofeeva, this will only increase the risk of women having abortions underground. The problem is that some women with irregular menstrual cycles only find out they are pregnant in the eighth week.
“I have not heard any scientifically based arguments for this initiative. Sayings that some standards are not complied with in private institutions are useless. Punish certain clinics, supervise others, and do not deprive citizens of their rights. We will not increase the birth rate in any way by banning abortion, even partially. These are two quantities that are not related to each other in any way.
A perfect example of this is Poland, where abortion is effectively banned and the birth rate is lower than in Russia. All over the world, abortion legislation is liberalizing, but here everything is going in the opposite direction,” Erofeeva noted.
Moreover, according to him, the problem of abortions in Russia is not acute – they are performed relatively infrequently, and the number of abortions in recent years has only decreased:
“This was only a real problem at the end of the USSR. We had approximately one million abortions per year in 2013, 517 thousand abortions per year in 2021, and 390 thousand abortions per year in 2022. On the contrary, the number of abortions decreased, meaning that women still managed to find opportunities to take control of the reproductive issue. But the state does nothing for this. I would really like the level of care and friendliness towards women in public clinics to be the same as in private clinics. They just don’t go there.
In addition, it is necessary not to ban abortion or allow unwanted pregnancies: It is necessary to educate the population, provide free birth control pills to the poor and students, and train doctors who can provide quality counseling to the public. No one can terminate a desired pregnancy. And unfortunately, an unwanted pregnancy will never turn into a desired child.”
Reason for wanting an abortion
Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor, Deputy Director of the Demographic Research Institute of the Federal Research Center for Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and expert on the problems of young families
Tamara Rostovskaya, on the contrary, noted that it is important to reduce the number of private centers performing abortion procedures in Russia, but not to completely deprive a woman of the opportunity to have an abortion if it is really necessary for medical reasons.
You just need to approach this step more carefully.
“It is very important for the state that women be healthy and give birth to healthy children. “Every child born needs to be born with love, be born and live in a complete and happy family where he/she is loved,” said the expert.
He added that he was against abortion but wanted to know the main reason why the woman wanted to terminate her pregnancy:
“It seems to me that the problem is that modern women do not live in dialogue with their parental family. Often a woman is alone at the beginning of pregnancy, the parental family is not involved in solving problems at this time. And if a woman is on the verge of divorce, she decides to have an abortion. “From my perspective, this decision needs to be discussed with an extended multi-generational family.”
If such a meeting with relatives is not possible, there must be a specialist at the clinic who can talk to the woman who comes for an abortion.
“In my opinion, medical centers that can perform abortions should have at least one demographer and psychologist who can help a woman make the right decision. They should counsel, talk and listen to the patient before the abortion. A woman needs full support at this time, and of course, first of all, from a man, that is, from the father of the unborn child. We want the woman to give birth to the child she desires. At the same time, if we are talking about diseases for which abortion is necessary, then there should be no restrictions,” Rostovskaya concluded.
The professor also stated that if abortion is completely banned, the situation during the USSR period will be repeated, and women will begin to have secret abortions or go to other countries to receive services there.
“This is a moral issue, so we need to look deeper. Therefore, here we need to start from the family, work with it, and explain why women and children are a whole. If an adult woman gives birth to a child she does not want, this child will be unhappy. We should talk about qualitative, not quantitative, reproduction of the population. “Every child born should be born with love, be born and live in a complete and happy family where everyone loves him,” says Rostovskaya.