God will give a child, and God will provide for the child.” How the authorities are forcing young Russian women to give birth

“God will give a child, and God will provide for the child.” How the authorities are forcing young Russian women to give birth

Twenty-year-old Irina from a small Siberian town was unable to get an abortion at an ordinary clinic.

She was not refused: formally, there is no ban on terminating a pregnancy in Russia. But she was sent for a pile of tests, forced to fill out an online questionnaire, undergo an ultrasound, visit a psychologist, and only after that come back for a referral for an abortion.

There were no ultrasound appointments at the clinic for the coming days, so she had to go to a private clinic and pay for the examination. Test results were “lost,” and the psychologist asked: “Why are you categorically against children?”

When, after all the tests, Irina ended up in the hospital and went for the “final” ultrasound, they “gave her the good news.”

“They said I was 12 weeks and one day along [terminating a pregnancy at that stage is no longer allowed in Russia]. I was hysterical for about half a day, everyone was calming me down: the head of the gynecology department, the nurses, the grandmothers who were lying there,” she recalls.

In this way, without refusing directly but through persuasion, pressure, and dragging out deadlines, doctors, at the direction of Russian authorities, are effectively forcing women to give birth to unwanted children.

Verstka studied anti-abortion and “incentive” measures adopted in the regions supposedly to raise the birth rate. In reality, such measures do not work in any country in the world, demographers explain.

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“God will give a child, and God will provide for the child.” How the authorities are forcing young Russian women to give birth

Verstka studied how anti-abortion pressure measures and incentives for early pregnancies work in Russia’s regions