Anti-abortion campaign urges women to give brith to more soldiers
A petition initiated by the orthodox church calls on regional deputies to adopt a law to ban “inducement to abortion" in the Arkhangelsk Oblast.
The proposed law text is posted on the Vkontakte page of a church in Severodvinsk. Churches in Novodvinsk and Arkhangelsk are also collecting signatures aimed at the regional assembly to take action and adopt a new anti-abortion law.
It should not be allowed to propagate abortion, and it should not be allowed to assist with termination of pregnancy anywhere in the Arkhangelsk region, the proposed law text suggest.
In social media, the church has posted a banner of an unborn baby side-by-side with a young child dressed up in combat uniform:
"Protect me today, I can protect you tomorrow. Abortion is murder," the text reads.
Russia’s intensified campaigns against abortion follows Vladimir Putin’s decision to declare 2024 “the Year of the Family.”
The Russian edition of the Barents Observer has today published a longer article telling the story about violations of women's reproductive rights in northwest-Russia.
In Cherepovets in the Vologda region, newspaper Rech told the story about Natalia, a woman with many children, who wanted to terminate her pregnancy. However, at the city clinic she was refused abortion and told that the clinic staff had instructions to persuade “all women under 50 to give birth.”
The drive for giving birth to more children that can serve the armed forces takes place amid a dramatic demographic crisis in Russia with birth rates declining to levels of the late 1990ties.
The country has also seen hundreds of thousands of young people who have left for exile after 2022 when Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Breeding for warfare
The number of war casualties are hidden from the public, but independent news online Mediazona estimates that over 165,000 are killed over the last three years. Additional hundreds of thousands are wounded.
While younger kids are marching in military uniforms in kindergartens and schools, older children are being taught how to shoot with automatic weapons, throw grenades and trained in other military technics.
Military theory is becoming compulsory in Russian schools.
Arkhangelsk will not the first region in Russia to adopt a law prohibiting the propaganda and coercion to abortion. Similar laws are passed in Tver, Kursk and Mordovia. Tens of other regions are debating similar legislation.
In 2011, Arkhangelsk became the first region in Russia to ban gay propaganda to children and a general ban of pride parades, the Barents Observer reported at the time. Two years later, a similar law became national.
