Health: Abortion Routine Ordeal for Russian Women
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
[Health News]: The morning she had the appointment she felt a bit worried – but no more than before seeing her dentist. She got up as usual and took the bus to the clinic. She was met by her doctor who immediately started the procedure. There was no time to reconsider her decision. Six hours later she was on her way back home, feeling a bit dizzy but also relieved to have solved her “problem.” When Sasha had her first abortion she was 18 and not ready to have her own child. “At that time, I did not have any income of my own and was not in a stable relationship” she said. “Actually, I felt like a child myself and could not imagine being a mom.” She met the father of her unborn child at a resort. She was attracted to the young man, who was some years older than her. “Basically, I knew nothing about contraception” Sasha recalled. “And this boyfriend knew equally. My mother is a physician and immediately noticed that I was pregnant. She encouraged me to have the baby, but I decided against completing the pregnancy.” Sasha’s story is not unusual in post-communist Russia. Even as the country pledged its love and support for women on Tuesday, Russian women still suffer far less control over their reproductive health than do their western sisters. Although the widespread availability of contraceptives has led to a steady decline in the country’s abortion rate it is still one of the highest in the world. “About 13 abortions are performed for every 10 live births in Russia,” said Olyga Kochatkova, head of the Caritas project Life Protection. “In comparison to other European countries, this figure is still very high”. In St. Petersburg, for example, 49,958 women underwent abortions in 1999, while three years later the number of abortions dived 16 percent to 42,035, according to the city health committee. These figures, however, do not include all abortions, as commercial clinics are not obliged to report the number of abortions they perform to the committee. The roots of the high abortion rate lie in the Soviet health system that for decades considered abortion as the primary form of birth control. The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to legalize abortion in 1920. Women could terminate an unwanted pregnancy in any state clinic, free of charge. This policy was maintained until 1936 when Stalin, in an effort to raise the birthrate to create more workers and soldiers, again outlawed abortion. As a result, illegal abortions began to flourish and the birthrate remained low. When the practice was legalized again in 1968, the number of abortions skyrocketed due to a desire for smaller families. “It was like an assembly line,” a 73-year-old pensioner said, recalling her experiences in a state clinic. “The day I had my operation I started to count the number of women having abortions. Thirty-three women left the clinic on that day alone.” When asked about her feelings towards abortions, she shrugged her shoulders. “Nearly every woman has them,” she said. In an attempt to lower the high abortion rate and avert the often serious health consequences for women, Soviet health planners made contraceptives more available, but little attention was paid to quality or distribution. “Soviet condoms were of thick and dark latex,” said Andrei, a 43-year-old English teacher. “They tended to slip off at the most inconvenient moment.” Birth-control pills were unpopular because of the high doses of hormones they contained and the fear of harmful side-effects. In 1971, because of their alleged carcinogenic effects, the pill was permitted only for “medical uses.” Not surprisingly, this resulted in many Soviet women having negative attitudes towards the pill. In rural areas, almost no contraceptives were available. Women developed their own methods of terminating unwanted pregnancies. In her book “Soviet Women” Francine du Plessix Gray stated that popular contraceptive formulas included douching with the juice of a lemon after intercourse and jumping off an icebox when a period was late by three days. Sometimes, women put their feet into boiling hot water, enriched with salt or mustard – a practice that was often fatal. Soviet views on sexual education and contraception remain in people’s minds well into the beginning of the 21st century. “Many young women decline to take hormonal birth-control pills because their mothers discouraged them,” said Tatyana Kozhuharova, chief doctor at the youth gynecological center Yuventa. “Most young people prefer using condoms to the pill. This has also to do with the high number of HIV-infected people here.”
