As the demographic fight reached a federal level, the Russian Orthodox Church began talking about banning abortion even after sexual violence. But the pro-life position is natural: from the Christian perspective, a fetus is a person from the moment of conception.
In June 2021, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, said: “The view of the church is that even if a girl becomes pregnant as a result of rape, this is not a reason to have an abortion.” He also added that the Russian Orthodox Church has experience of working with raped girls who decided not to terminate their pregnancies, and the child subsequently brought them happiness. This idea (the Russian Orthodox Church cannot have a different view on abortion) was repeated by Priest Philip Ilyashenko. In March 2023, Syktyvkar and Komi-Zyryan Archbishop Pitirim said that rape victims could go to hell if they did not forgive the offender. According to him, heaven can await a rapist if he repents, and rape victims will face the torments of hell if they refuse to treat the offender in a Christian way.
This fall, many Direct Life Line programs were broadcast on Spas TV channel. In the first, psychologist Lyudmila Podolskaya said it discouraged women from terminating a pregnancy resulting from rape. In the second case, an argument broke out and the men were given the floor. St. at MGIMO Archbishop Igor Fomin, rector of the Alexander Nevsky Church, admitted that he did not understand the feelings of people advocating abortion after the violence. “You cannot resolve some of your grievances and emotional issues at the expense of another person’s life,” he said. And in general, according to Igor Fomin, a woman in such a situation needs to be helped by her husband, because “there is no difference between children.” The priest was supported by Yuri Kot, Dean of the Faculty of Media Communications of the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography, a secular guest of the studio. He said the raped woman who decides to have an abortion commits an even greater crime. This woman is sent a test to demonstrate an example of “true love.” “Yes, this is the seed of an evil character, but you can develop it and exalt it as a woman,” the cat concluded.
It’s as if these men live in a private world, where they don’t really understand why the family turns its back on the victim of violence. And talk about testing sounds like cynical populism. The obvious question to ask yourself is: “What would you say to your wife or daughter who is in such pain?” – Mr. Cat considered this manipulation. Normal question. But putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a difficult task; It is much easier to talk about love, believing that such horror will never happen to loved ones.
Natalya Antonova, Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University, believes: “Many rape cases are not made public and are not included in statistics. In our country, women are stigmatized in such situations. The victim may become withdrawn and push her husband away. “If the husband blames his wife, even without expressing it openly, and if the spouses become lonely in their own experiences, there is a high probability that this will result in divorce.”
The UN Human Rights Council has accepted that forcing a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape to give birth to a child is torture. Rape is a tragedy. And the most necessary thing for the victim is support, not clarification of the circumstances and transfer of responsibility for what happened to him. Smearing the victim as the culprit, manipulating feelings of guilt, does not speak of kindness towards the mother or the baby. Abortion is a painful, difficult decision for many women, both ethically and religiously. So, let’s say the baby is born, what awaits him? Orphanage if the mother abandons the baby, or ostracism if she lives in a family but knows the circumstances of her birth. The courage of a woman who can leave such a child, and who can also love and raise him, certainly deserves respect and admiration. But this is an achievement, and forcing someone to achieve this is unacceptable.
The fact that the victim who got pregnant from the rapist hates both herself and the fetus reminds her of her own experience. She experiences pain, shame, fear, and guilt, and this trauma is incompatible with successful motherhood. The crime may have been committed by a sick person whose children were doomed to suffer. And this woman was left alone with her misfortune: as the priest believed, a wonderfully understanding husband who would surround the unfortunate woman with attention, no, her parents may not be there either, or they may have turned away, the only hope is themselves. And meanwhile the victim, suffering from one man, hears from another man: “You are a criminal! Hell is waiting for you. Give birth! This is a test for you!
The ancient Greek physician Galen two thousand years ago believed that a woman cannot become pregnant without pleasure, and this view was considered true for a long time, and therefore, once a woman becomes pregnant, how can it be proven that it is not hers? free will? Doctor Galen lived centuries ago; later this view was rejected by science, but our contemporary Vakhtang Kipshidze said that “rape does not usually result in pregnancy.” So maybe there is no crime? So who counted these, how many people who were raped went to the police? An ovulating woman can become pregnant after being raped by a fertile man. In the joint article of doctors Viktor Brutman, Sergei Enikolopov and Maria Radionova “Unintended pregnancy in victims of sexual violence” it is stated: “Pregnancy after rape is not such a rare event. Studies in maternity hospitals show that among the many reasons for abandoning a newborn child, about % of cases It shows that rape also occurred on the 8th-10th.”
“In pre-revolutionary Russia, the peasant community tried to reconcile the rapist and the victim (the victim’s parents, if he was a minor),” says Natalya Pushkareva, head of the Center for Gender Research at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. Russian Academy of Sciences. — The rapist can pay a certain amount by the decision of the meeting, or he can pay for the crime committed against honor by working (working for the victim’s family). The girls remained silent because they were afraid of becoming the object of gossip. She would rather give birth secretly or destroy the baby than complain. Medical examination was considered shameful, but children born from “forced sexual intercourse” were treated as ordinary.”
In the broadcast “Thermal Springs” they recalled that during the Great Patriotic War there were many people who were raped by the Germans and they gave birth. Then they showed a fragment from Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “Burnt by the Sun – 2”; here, a woman raped by a fascist gives birth, surrounded by Soviet soldiers who offer to name the child Joseph Vissarionovich. It is true that medical observations of rape victims during military conflicts show that the trauma experienced has profound immediate and long-term consequences on the mental health of the victims.
But since “Hot Springs” uses artistic examples, let’s turn to great literature. In Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Pavlovich raped the mentally ill Lizaveta Stinking and impregnated her murderer. There is a story by Somerset Maugham called “The Unconquered” in which a French woman is raped by a victorious German in front of her family. After learning about her pregnancy, she wanted to get married, but the woman strangled the baby. Evil begets evil. This vicious circle cannot be stopped by oppression of women, but if society and the Church really want to think about the weakest victims of violence and children, then perhaps it is worth starting with help and support rather than speaking out loud about sin and trial, Because human love is more convincing with concrete actions. A separate question is why the state needs these children. Probably rhetoric. Otherwise, the authorities’ love for children works according to the proverb: “Whose bull jumps, the calf is ours.”
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.