In August 2023, the Russian region of Mordovia passed a law banning “inducement to abort,” and Tambov Region intends to make a similar bill law. Meanwhile, other regions are looking to stop private clinics from offering abortions. These anti-abortion initiatives are all the doings of a foundation called Women for Life, which receives ongoing support from the Russian state. We gained access to the organization’s volunteer chats to investigate how and by what means the foundation talks women out of getting abortions. In this article, we share what we managed to learn about the workings of Women for Life and its founder Natalya Moskvitina.
— So, do you feel bad if you can’t talk them out of it [getting an abortion]?
— I do, definitely.
So went an exchange between a doctor at an Arkhangelsk women’s health clinic and Natalya Moskvitina, the founder of this “abortion rescue charitable foundation.”
Women for Life’s social media avatar shows a pregnant woman in front of the Latin letter “Z.” [Translator’s note: The letter Z became a symbol of civilian support for Russia’s war after being photographed on the side of Russian military vehicles in Eastern Ukraine.] The foundation’s website keeps a running tally of “babies saved”—when this article was originally published, in October 2023, it read “3,621.” One of Women for Life’s goals, according to Moskvitina herself, is to “increase the birth rate by reducing the number of abortions.” She explicitly describes the foundation as “anti-abortion”; it is supported by many Russian government and church officials, including Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. The foundation was cofounded by Boris Korchevnikov, a Russian propagandist and media manager placed on the EU sanctions list for his support of the war. Korchevnikov is the president of Spas TV, where Moskvitina also works.
The foundation’s partners include United Russia, the Union of Orthodox Women, the pro-government Women’s Power Union, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, and Spas TV.
Women for Life also employs a gynecologist, Irina Filatova. Reviews of her work are mixed. For example, one patient recounts Filatova telling her that she was expecting triplets during an ultrasound; after visiting other doctors, the patient found out that she was pregnant with only one child. The reviews website Zoon contains several other stories of Filatova giving incorrect diagnoses and prescribing unnecessary medications to patients.
Women for Life began as a grassroots social movement. Its activists staged anti-abortion protests (launching balloons from a “pro-life ship” on the Moscow River, for example), held lectures on pre-abortion counseling, and actively sought out allies in government.
Seven years later, the organization is a registered charity and enjoys great support from the state; their initiative Hello, Mom! has been adopted at a federal level. This initiative provides material and food assistance to needy families with children under three years of age. In parallel, though, it is also undertaking an ambitious anti-abortion campaign throughout the country, including by signing several memoranda on combating abortion with Russian regional governments, and drafting anti-abortion publicity campaigns and scripts for pre-abortion “counseling sessions.” One of Hello, Mom’s successfully implemented initiatives is a law banning “inducement to abort” in Mordovia.
“Our goals are to preserve life before birth and to reduce the number of abortions. Our objective is to encourage women to be happy and to enjoy giving birth to healthy children, and to coach doctors on talking to undecided women such that they make a positive reproductive choice.”
So foundation staff describe the project’s goals and objectives.
In June 2023, Hello, Mom! was listed as one the top 10 initiatives at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives forum — whose guests included Vladimir Putin. After the forum, the project was given a personal audience with the president. On her VKontakte page, Moskvitina wrote that Putin called the project “one of the best” and approved of the idea of moving abortion out of the private sector and “under full control of the state.”
“Our second proposal to be endorsed by the President is to move abortion out of the private sector to be under the full control of the state, just like blood donation and organ transplants are. State control of abortion plus enacting Hello, Mom! programs all around Russia will put us in great shape.”
Women for Life was also a finalist in the inaugural run of Our Contribution, a yearly national ranking [of businesses and NGOs that contribute to state strategic goals — trans.], which, according to Natalya Moskvitina, helped the foundation “expand its operations and attract new partners.” The foundation sent three separate projects to the finals —Hello, Mom!, Mom’s Job, and Mom’s Window.
Why aren’t Russian women having babies?
According to the Federal State Statistics Service, Russia saw a record drop in its birth rate in 2023. Between January and June, 511,000 children were born (8.5 children per 1000 people). The only year for which this figure was lower was 1999. Moreover, the country’s death rate is on the rise. In June 2023, it came out that state-run media had been told not to publish statistics about Russia’s demographics.
Russian Public Opinion Research Center polls have shown that 39% of Russian women of reproductive age are unwilling to give birth to children in the next five years because of poor finances and housing conditions. About 38% of women also indicated that they did not plan to give birth due to instability and the domestic political situation. 37% of women cited health problems as a factor in their decision.
In contrast, the Ministry of Health’s 2017 pre-abortion counseling guidelines report that only 5% of women looking to get an abortion were doing so because of pressure from relatives.
In September 2023, the Hello, Mom! hotline was rolled out across the country, funded as part of the national strategic plan for demographics. Women for Life has released an official anti-abortion video advertisement for the hotline, and its billboards have already popped up in several cities. The hotline number is also listed on the websites of clinics, women’s health centers, and various city agencies.
“The first thing the doctor says is, ‘Congrats, you’re a mom’”
We called Women for Life’s hotline and told them that we were worried about a friend who wanted to get an abortion: she had other plans for her life, and her boyfriend was in an active combat zone. The counselor on call immediately advised us to “scare her out of it” by telling her that she would start experiencing physical and mental health problems and emphasizing that abortion is “murder.” Not for a second did she doubt that our friend’s mind needed to be changed.
The counselor especially suggested that we make the following comparison: If our friend cares so much about the life of an adult on the front lines, how could she then want to “kill a defenseless baby”? When asked what to do if her partner dies, the counselor said that being a single mother “has its advantages,” since it would make her eligible for additional welfare benefits. We were also given a link to an anti-abortion movie to send to our friend. Later, after we signed up for volunteer training with the foundation, we learned that hotline monitors are not required to have a background in psychology or medicine.
We called the hotline one more time, after it had been rolled out nationwide. This time, we were met by a recording of Natalya Moskvitina announcing that we had reached the pregnancy support hotline, and the Women for Life Foundation had changed numbers. We introduced ourselves as Marina, an 18-year-old who had gotten pregnant with her ex-boyfriend. She got the hotline number at her women’s health clinic. Marina was not happy about her unplanned pregnancy: she lives in a dormitory, has other plans for her life, and, most importantly, she feels that she is still a child herself. This fictional protagonist was four weeks pregnant.
We were answered by a volunteer counselor named Anastasia Navarova. (We were unable to confirm if she has a psychology degree.) She immediately congratulated us on the pregnancy and invited us to imagine having a “mini me.” Anastasia explained that raising a child is not as hard as it looks. “They can’t even see at first. That’s basically zero initial parenting required! That kid hardly needs anything from you. It’s not like your baby will be crying out for milk while secretly thinking, ‘Uh oh, I bet my mom’s not financially independent yet.’ No one knows exactly what ‘quality care’ means. Kids under 7 think their parents are Greek gods. Whatever Mom says and does goes.”
“But they’ll grow up at some point,” “Marina” objects. By then, she’ll have gotten married and found a job, we’re reassured.
“Marina” says that she doesn’t want a kid and isn’t ready for so much responsibility. “It’s an itsy-bitsy little clump! How could you not want it? Kids are the gift of life. There’s a little life inside you already. You got the good-luck crown. The person inside you already looks like a tiny human under a microscope.” [Editors’ note: In the fourth week of pregnancy, the embryo is a mere 1 mm in size and does not outwardly resemble a human at all.]
At last, our character admits that she’s been thinking about an abortion.
“Did you know that terminating a pregnancy has serious consequences? Statistics say that within two years of an abortion, women always get depression or mental illness. In some form or another. And there’s health consequences—infertility, for example, and other effects, too. Having the baby now and then figuring out what to do with it might be hard, but taking steps with irreversible consequences will be infinitely harder. Some things we just can’t change.”
Here is Natalya Moskvitina herself describing the foundation’s scripts for medical institutions interacting with pregnant patients:
“The manual teaches doctors a special conversation algorithm to use with pregnant women. It avoids any phrasing like ‘So, do you want to keep it or what?’ and ‘Are you planning to carry to term or terminate?’ The first thing the doctor says is, ‘Congrats, you’re a mom.’ Then they give her a brochure with all kinds of resources — offered by the state, the regional government, non-profits, businesses.”
We spoke with an anonymous certified psychologist, who considers this way of talking to women unacceptable:
“Applied psychology and counseling is all about helping people figure themselves out and discern their needs, wants, and abilities. But right up front, these people are talking about goals that are external to the women seeking support. In fact, I wonder if these women actually realize who they’re calling. That this isn’t a ‘support hotline’ where they just talk to someone about themselves and their needs—that these people will insist on their keeping the pregnancy?
There’s nothing wrong with asking what their situation is and why they don’t want a kid. It’s true that unplanned pregnancies can be overwhelming; they force you to adapt to a new reality quickly. Women can definitely feel lost and in need of support. The fact that someone’s calling the hotline implies that they’re not 100% sure about their decision, whatever it may be. There’s nothing wrong with telling them about state programs supporting mothers. But there is something wrong with manipulation. It’s not like this particular non-profit or this manipulating counselor are committing to care for this woman and her child for the rest of their lives. They’re just taking advantage of a vulnerable, overwhelmed pregnant woman for the sake of their own goals, instead of hers.
Also, hardly anyone thinks abortion is ‘just one little procedure.’ Most of the women I know, including those who believe that abortion is their inalienable right, would not pursue it themselves if it were not absolutely necessary — they certainly don’t make light of it.”
Does banning abortion increase the birth rate?
Russian bureaucrats constantly talk about the need to raise the birth rate through anti-abortion measures. But does that work in practice? We asked demographer Aby Shukyurov.
“Banning abortion does not actually help raise the birth rate at all. The USSR banned abortion in 1936, thinking that that might increase the birth rate. The number of abortions did fall sharply at first, but that was because people had not yet adapted to the new reality, and illegal abortions were not being reflected in the data. Once that happened, the number of abortions started to rise.” Studies chart an increase in the number of abortions from 1937 to 1940, from 355,000 per year to 500,000 per year.
“The consequences were pretty disastrous: maternal mortality increased. If you look at the USSR’s birth rate, it went down in every generation, and abortion wasn’t the issue. The issue was that people naturally want to control their birth rate.
The same thing happened in Romania. To draw a contemporary parallel—we know that abortion is banned in Poland. Poland’s birth rate is quite low, lower than Russia’s. Poland doesn’t have a high birth rate by world standards or even by European standards. Quite the opposite; it’s a bit below average.
If a country bans abortion, its people find workarounds. Polish people go abroad for abortions. That creates another own set of problems: abortion bans always hit the poorest people hardest. Some people struggle to travel. They don’t have enough money.”
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Who is Natalya Moskvitina?
Natalya Moskvitina received her journalism degree in Volgograd. She is a frequent guest on federal TV programs, and for the past few years, she has hosted the programs Family Rescue Service and Life Hotline on Spas TV, the latter focusing on abortion.
In late 2021, Moskvitina became a member of the Civic Chamber [a consultative body whose members are appointed by the president to draft legislation—trans.], and the Governmental Council on Guardianship in the Social Sphere. She is a member of the Commission for Demography and Protection of the Family, Children, and Traditional Family Values, as well as the Commission for the Development of Information Society and the Media. In 2023, she was an official spokesperson for Sergei Sobyanin’s Moscow mayoral campaign. Moskvitina posted that she voted electronically in the election—a topic that the foundation also covered. E-voters received points that they could donate, including to Women for Life.
In Moskvitina’s telling, it was personal experience that led her to get involved in anti-abortion activism. According to her, three of her four children were “snatched from the clutches of abortionists.”
“I didn’t have much support. No one was saying unequivocally, ‘keep the baby.’ I just prayed for God to grant me strength of spirit and a healthy child in my womb. And here they all are. All four of my kids, perfectly healthy. But all those women out there being taken in by doctors’ schemes—who’s going to protect them? Who cares about them and their unborn children?”
Moskvitina calls abortion “a categorical evil” and believes that it should be banned at the legal level—”just like drug addiction, prostitution, and pedophilia.” She also believes that “promoting contraception as a birth control tool” means advertising “lust,” and that women who become pregnant as a result of rape should carry pregnancies to term.
Moskvitina actively supports the war in Ukraine. She regularly travels to occupied territory as a correspondent for Spas TV. In 2022, she created “Thank You, Soldier,” an online portal where people could leave thank-you messages for Russian troops. In May 2022, Moskvitina planned to visit Austria to attend an OSCE conference about democracy and present on Russophobia and “YouTube’s bias against Christian content,” but her invitation was rescinded.
The invasion of Ukraine gave anti-abortion campaigning new meaning: Moskvitina’s social media posts attribute the combat in the Donbas to the high abortion rate in the region, and call on women to bear children regardless of national political instability. She frames abortion as an “invisible” war that paves the way for real bloodshed.
“We looked at demographic maps to see which post-Soviet countries were the worst on abortions. And we saw it was Donetsk and Lugansk. When you look at today’s events through those eyes, you realize they were probably bound to happen. If we kill our children, which is an invisible war, then we’ll end up in a real war.”
Both Moskvitina and Women for Life deleted their Instagram profiles after the site was ruled “extremist,” but more posts in this vein are available on Moskvitina’s VKontakte page:
“During wartime, new rules apply. While you fight, she gives birth. Those are the roles in nature. Don’t kid yourself.”
“This is a fratricidal war. Brother nations are godlessly killing one another. Meanwhile, our women don’t want to have babies.”
“Abortion is just one consequence of the ongoing war over us. The war didn’t start 8 years ago, or even in 2014. It started in 1917, when they killed the Tsar’s family, and in 1920, when they legalized… that’s right, abortion.”
On one Spas TV broadcast, Natalya Moskvitina asked a Russian soldier’s opinion on abortion. “We all know what will happen [if people keep getting abortions]. The nation will cease to exist. Ethnic Russian Slavs will become a thing of the past, like so many other peoples have.” On her social media, Moskvitina also shared a video by a different soldier with an analogous message about “the Slavs dying out.”
Another constant theme in Moskvitina’s writing is that Russia is standing up against “Western values”: “The battle between the Ukraine and Russia is a fight between LGBTs and traditionalist Zs.”
Read the translation
Natalya Moskvitina
March 8, 2022
We’ve been saying that Russia should stand up for itself in private since forever. That the West is enslaving us. That we should stop playing catch-up. And go to bat for traditional values on the world stage. That we’re the last remaining stronghold of a family-centered and Christian worldview.
And now it’s happened. Yes, a military operation is being used to remove this cancerous tumor. That’s how you remove tumors. Surgically.
What did you expect? Did you really think the West will repent of its crimes and propaganda of perversion at the negotiating table? The two countries will shake hands and live happily ever after?
This military operation is not a diplomatic failure. There can be no diplomacy with fascism. Offense is the best defense when you’re dealing with fascists. I support our President’s policy. And I’m praying for him.
She believes that women “only become women once they become mothers.”
“All women are fulfilled by motherhood. Women’s number one priority, their natural drive, is to be mothers. And, naturally, they need more than one child; having one kid is hard. Two kids make your life more or less decent, but three is where the fun really begins. […] Women only feel like full people once they have already had kids and can focus all their efforts on them. And that happens after three kids. Today’s women are depriving themselves of these gifts when they choose subfertility or abortion, which is a scourge on the world. That evil can never be justified.”
In May 2023, Natalya Moskvitina appeared in a propaganda video, “Feminazis” (“Femki”) about Feminist Anti-War Resistance. In it, she claims that we were paid to slander her foundation. After that, we decided to write an investigative essay about Women for Life.
Many believe that women have more children when their country is stable. Do they?
Aby Shukurov believes that after the war, the birth rate may increase sharply, but only for a short period. That bump will more likely be due to people having waited a long time to have babies, not to them feeling absolute stability. Even if stability proves lasting, the birth rate will eventually return to its normal, pre-war levels. It is difficult to draw conclusions ahead of time:
“There are a number of ‘buts’ here. The crises and transformations of the 1990s meant that Russians had very few children or put off childbearing, hoping to have children in more favorable times. Russia’s total fertility rate in 1999 was 1.16%, which was a historic low. In the early 2000s, the birth rate began to steadily grow—people went ahead with plans to have children that they had previously put off.”
“Abortion is not a woman’s right”: how Women for Life promotes regional anti-abortion policies
The initiative Hello, Mom! is being rolled out to Russia’s regions; it has been implemented in Mordovia for the past three years. In 2022, Women for Life won a 5-million-ruble grant to bring the initiative to that republic. Theirs was the largest grant out of all the winning initiatives. Based on their July 2022 report, the initiative also received a grant from United Russia.
In August 2023, Mordovia passed a law banning “inducement to abort.” Initially, its State Council proposed criminalizing “abortion propaganda” as well, but that language was cut from the bill. The law was drafted in collaboration with Natalya Moskvitina: Mordovia’s State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company reported that the bill “was an extension of ‘Hello, Mom!’”
The preface to the bill states, “Claims that abortion is an ‘internationally recognized human right’ or ‘a woman’s right’ are false. Not only do binding international legal documents not include the so-called right to an abortion, they include ample grounds for protecting the lives of unborn children from the moment of conception.”
Violations of the law by individuals are punishable by a fine of 5,000 to 10,000 rubles. Legal entities and medical institutions are liable for 100,000 to 200,000 rubles in fines or the suspension of their operations for 90 days.
On October 17, 2023, the Tambov Regional Duma introduced a similar bill—with an identical preface and penalties. The bill was penned by Moskvitina.
“Claims that abortion is an ‘internationally recognized human right’ or ‘a woman’s right’ are false”
Recently, as part of Hello, Mom!, several private clinics in Mordovia ceased performing abortions. Doctors at these clinics had been trained by Women for Life’s staff. The initiative was co-led by the head of the republic himself, Artyom Zdunov. Recently, Zdunov announced that, thanks to Hello, Mom!, abortions in Mordovia have decreased by 42%. Zdunov reported on his success to Putin in person.
Tatarstan has also seen refusals to perform abortions recently. One third of its private clinics have given up their abortion licensing. (There are 86 total medical institutions licensed to perform abortions in Tatarstan.) Recently, clinic representatives convened at a State Council session, where they were told that the regional government hopes to move abortion out of the private sector.
A Women for Life staffer confirmed to us by message that the foundation was involved in the initiatives to move abortion out of private clinics in Tatarstan and Kaliningrad. She added that the achievement belongs to others, as well — only with the support of regional governments could the initiatives have gotten so far. After all, they choose which recommendations from foundation memoranda to implement in the region. Governors typically serve as the point people in these discussions about moving abortion out of private clinics.
As this staffer explained, Natalya Moskvitina helps send out letters to regional civic chambers proposing that they adopt policies restricting abortion rights.
Kazan-based newspaper Biznes Online’s sources believe that the proportion of clinics in Tatarstan that have given up their abortion licenses may reach 50%. Some clinics have retained their licenses, but are only providing abortions in cases of medical necessity. Scandinavia clinics have stopped performing both elective and medically necessary abortion procedures. Meanwhile, the government is putting pressure on private medical institutions: chief physicians have been told that their clinics will not receive state medical insurance payouts unless they give up their pregnancy termination licenses.
Official memoranda of understanding with Hello, Mom! have been issued by eight regions: the Komi Republic, the Republics of Mordovia and Tatarstan (the latter signed by Children’s Rights Ombudswoman Irina Volynets), and Arkhangelsk, Tambov, Tulsk, Novgorod, and Magadan Regions. The foundation staffer reported that they hoped to sign agreements by the end of 2023 with Kaluga and Tver Regions; local leaders had already given a verbal green light to collaboration. They also plan to bring the initiative to Chelyabinsk, Voronezh, and Lipetsk Regions.
Pro-life blogger Maria Mostinets, a friend of Moskvitina’s, recently met with the lieutenant governor of Chelyabinsk. In Mostinets’s words, Chelyabinsk leaders are wise to “abortion trolls and feminists and their tricks,” and the lieutenant governor is “very invested in reducing their media footprint.” Mostinets singled out a program launched by a group of feminist activists, the Emergency Contraception Storage Fund, calling its organizers “meddling girls.” Some of Chelyabinsk’s private clinics have recently begun refusing to perform abortions.
The governor of Arkhangelsk Region has boasted that, thanks to Women for Life, they have already “retrained all the doctors” in Arkhangelsk—all 168 who work at women’s health centers. He added that doctors should not ask women about aborting as if that were a positive or even neutral option; they must persuade women that abortion is “a negative outcome.” The governor’s statement came during a Spas TV appearance.
That news report follows Natalya Moskvitina to the office of a psychologist who counsels women who are planning to get abortions. Moskvitina is surprised to hear the psychologist say that her job is to “help women make their reproductive choices,” not to talk them out of getting an abortion. Moskvitina declares this unacceptable, and the Spas TV hosts term the counseling sessions “psychological ‘help,’ in scare quotes.” During the same story, Moskvitina interviews a soldier who has recently become a father, telling him, “It’s important right now, in this difficult time for our country, to be having children.”
Women for Life has also tried to extend its reach outside of Russia. Judging by their old posts, the foundation was in regular contact with the far-right conservative party Georgian Idea. Levan Chachua, who served as Georgian Idea’s chair, is a conservative politician known for his pro-Russian views. A 2016 post shows that Women for Life received “support and spiritual guidance” from the party and planned to collaborate “at the lawmaking level.”
“Professional manipulators”: How Women for Life’s volunteers talk women out of abortions online
One of the foundation’s areas of focus is volunteer work. There is plenty to be done: delivering supplies to mothers in need, supporting individual families and managing their cases, or, perhaps, volunteering with the Save the Human Inside chat to talk women on the internet out of abortions. To join the chat, we first had to attend a special volunteer school, so we signed up for a training series.
One session is led by foundation staff psychologist Irina Bochkovskaya. Describing the volunteers’ goals, she tells us:
“It’s important to cast doubt on their perceptions. Just because someone says, ‘I don’t want a kid,’ that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. You can give that kid a chance. She might say that she doesn’t want it. But what’s her life situation like? Has she ever wanted to be a mother in the past? How is she so sure that she’ll have another chance to get pregnant? That’s how we undermine their perceptions, which is the best part about manipulating people. You should leave here as professional manipulators—that is, people who can alter someone else’s perceptions, opinions, and desires. As creepy as it may sound, that’s the goal. You should leave here as professional manipulators—that is, people who can alter someone else’s perceptions, opinions, and desires.”
As of October 2023, the chat had 298 volunteers. Every day, chat monitors find dozens of social media and forum posts by women who want to get abortions. Most posts come from VKontakte, woman.ru, and mom.life. The chat volunteers’ job is to open those pages and leave a comment urging women to “choose life.” They should also like other volunteers’ comments so that the algorithm bumps them higher or awards them a “best comment” badge. But the number one rule of the chat, as volunteer coordinator Ekaterina Kuznetsova explains, is to be polite and tactful in conversation.
At the end of each month, the coordinators collect data on women who decided to keep their pregnancies after hearing the volunteers’ arguments, then update the “babies saved” counter on the website. A foundation staffer told us that more than half of the babies for the August 2023 total were “saved” by the Save the Human Inside chat.
The chat has some active members. They leave comments every day — and sometimes make up custom stories that echo the original posters’ narratives.
The comments screenshotted in this article come from users who we confirmed to be chat members
Read the translation
Why’d you chose to abort? Haven’t you read about the procedure? Just like, if you’re young, abortions can be dangerous, speaking from my friends’ experience. I’m 19 myself, I thought about aborting, but they talked me out of it, I’d never do it now
Have you ever read about medical abortion? Just like, if you haven’t, go do it right away, so you know what can happen and the side effects. I got them myself, I aborted like an idiot and now it’s too late L and I’m infertile
Certainly not all of them observe the rule of “tactful conversation”: many comments are outright manipulative and attempt to impose the commenters’ own views on life. Some statements are downright aggressive: volunteers try to provoke shame or fear by describing the horrors that await women after “the murder,” i.e. abortion.
Read the translation
Theyll take the baby out piece by piece… tear off its arms and legs. Theres videos of it. In 3 wks itd be born premature and they can keep it alive in the incubator. Idk what your health issues are but thats not a reason to kill your baby. If you dont want it then give it up for adoption there’s no reason to kill it! Also lots of problems are solvable nowadays! Science is making progress! Please think carefully about it!
Volunteers are often tasked with talking women in difficult life situations out of abortions. Links to posts about pregnancies as a result of rape were shared in the chat several times. More common are the posts by women asking about abortions for medical reasons — volunteers comment on these, too.
Read the translation
1. My friend had 7 kids, the last 5 were C-sections, after 6 she got her tubes tied but a year later she got pregnant again. She never considered aborting, she and her husband want all their kids to live. That was rough on her health, always one thing or another, but she turned out ok. I don’t know your situation and I’m not judging, or trying to convince you, maybe it really is a life-or-death thing in your case, just wanted to share. You can also go talk to better doctors, like Women for Life has some good recommendations, they do free counseling. And times are changing, healthcare is improving, so maybe your health stuff won’t be critical for being pregnant. It’s not like abortion ever made anyone healthier haha
2. Got our Edwards Syndrome diagnosis 😭 anyone know what terminating at 13 weeks is like? Waiting for Mon to call prenatal. Geneticist said they’d give me some kind of pills. How long does one stay in the hospital?
3. Anastasia, the baby already has a fully formed nervous system by week 12 and it stays like that from week 13 for their whole life. Its little baby body has the same number of nerve endings as yours. It feels everything like you do. All the pain. Why don’t you want to accept your little angel as it is? It is really scary when kids are sick. It’s terribly painful. But it’s less painful than tearing them to bits 😭 💔 💔💔 You’re the only one who gets anesthesia…
Sometimes monitors link to posts about emergency contraception or combined oral contraceptives. During training, the volunteer coordinator had specifically stated that Women for Life considers these a form of abortion. (In reality, these medications prevent pregnancy from occurring in the first place; they are not abortifacients.) The coordinators also frequently ask volunteers to leave comments supporting anti-abortion policies—and to make sure to participate in opinion polls about abortion.
Read the translation
Hello all! We also need comments about banning abortion in private clinics and general ones about the need to recognize humans as humans from the moment life starts.
Here: ___
And on YouTube if you can: ___
And forward this to your chats please, cause we did a bad job on Anna Kuznetsova’s last post. Specifically we need to ignore the bad comments and keep commenting on the good comments to push them to the top, because last time the other team commented on their own stuff and moved the bad comments to the top, even though we commented more.
Foundation staffers particularly complain about “pro-choicers,” who they think of as abortion supporters. (In reality, pro-choicers support all women’s freedom to choose.)
“They may reply to you boldly and aggressively. Why do they do that? First and foremost, to get women to abort. These people usually benefit from that somehow. Some of them are getting paid by Western countries, some of them just believe in it, sometimes it’s religious organizations—even Satanists are involved. They comment around the clock, so they must be taking shifts.”
Read the translation
1. It’s different with your own kid. During childbirth you meet the love of your whole life and you’ll forget how you could ever live without your dear, sweet, goofy, precious baby. You’ll have the strongest, and sweetest feelings ever and not even want the life you are living now back because it’s just self-centered filler.
Talk to your husband, maybe he’s been wanting another kid in the family. It’s not like not having kids will stop you from getting old and sick. You may as well have them now, pregnancy birth and parenting will be harder physically later on.
2. Don’t do it. You might bitterly regret it.
Abortion doesn’t end your pregnancy, it makes you your child’s murderer
3. If you abort, say goodbye to your mental and physical health and happy life. You think you can achieve happiness by killing your own child? Statistics say women who abort have a higher suicide risk. Weigh your options carefully. Your career can wait, your whole, life is ahead of you, but you can’t get your kid back.
There’s lots of reasons. The main one is that people don’t value one another’s lives. Abortion today is a huge industry that does billions of dollars in business. There’s a great film, “Right to Choose” about it. It should be required watching for all high school students. But there’s good news, too. More and more people are realizing that abortion is a literal genocide. It’s not good for women, for families, for society, or for the government. I’m confident that Russia will outlaw it very soon.
4. Isn’t it so special that God gave us women the joy of carrying life inside of us? Only women can make life take shape!
You’ll have a great kid!
When I got pregnant for the third time on accident I was really upset and though that I didn’t want to give birth again… and I didn’t feel any love for the baby…
But then I submitted and accepted it. If God gave it to me, He must know better than I do that now is a good time! I gave birth to a baby boy! You can’t even imagine how much I love him! All those “I can’ts,” “I can’t do it,” “I can’t take it,” aren’t true!
Have faith!
Don’t make that terrible mistake, don’t give into your hormones or temporary life circumstances. You’ll love them just as much as your other kids. That’s your kid’s soul! Don’t let it die in agony!
Women for Life is not the only organization that tries to talk people out of abortions online. Unborn and Alive, another charitable foundation, is also involved: we heard from Women for Life staffers that their volunteers also monitor social media for posts about abortion.
Is it the state’s prerogative to increase the birth rate?
From a purely demographic point of view, state policies for raising the birth rate are ineffective, says Aby Shukyurov:
“I’m not a fan of pronatalist policies: they don’t work. Demographic transition theory is much more complex. People’s values and lifestyles are shifting, and they have learned to plan families and effectively control their birth rate by using contraception. We can’t do anything to change that overall trend. There’s no going back to the 18th or 19th centuries and their birth model. Demographic transition theory says that when children have low mortality and a higher survival rate, you no longer need to have a lot of them. The second demographic transition theory describes a two-child model being replaced by a one-child model.
Promoting pronatalist policies often amplifies, among other things, society’s phobias of abortions, divorce, and contraception. Is that worth it for a minor bump in the birth rate? I don’t think so.”
Instead, Shukyurov believes, governments should pay more attention to mortality:
“Demographics aren’t just about birth rates—there’s death rates and immigration, too. I think governments should engage with issues of mortality—what’s wrong with passing policies to improve people’s quality and length of life? That includes advancing healthcare, overseeing alcohol usage, improving road quality, and lots of other factors.”
Women for Life and the church
Women for Life is not officially affiliated with the church, but Patriarch Kirill has publicly voiced his support of the foundation. In 2019, the foundation awarded him their Protecting Life Before Birth Ambassador award. Many of the foundation’s employees and volunteers are Orthodox: their profile pictures might show them attending church in a headscarf, or they might follow Christian pages and share their content. Religious topics sometimes come up in the group chat, such as the fate of unbaptized children.
Every week, the foundation helps lead anti-abortion prayer services at the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In a video of one such prayer service, Archpriest Fyodor Romanenko lectures,
“We need to pray for our whole land to be saved from that. Because it’s one of the answers to the question, ‘Why is our great, powerful, wealthy country, while not quite in ruins, certainly in a very odd state… where it can’t use its power, can’t use its resources, where everything is going wrong?’ It’s exactly because abortions are still happening in our country.
Lots of people ask why the Lord is no longer sending us great military leaders, ones like Prince Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, and Alexander Suvorov. Why don’t we have great scientists and poets anymore? Well, God is sending them—but not all of them are getting born.”
As an example of a “great person” who did “manage to get born,” the priest offers the arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov. “The AK-47 is famous around the world. But not everyone knows that Kalashnikov was the seventeenth child in his family.”
Then the priest brings up Serbian Patriarch Pavle, who told his flock not to be surprised at NATO’s bombing them. “Serbs, is there abortion in your land? Do not be surprised that God is treating you this way.”
“It’s important for people to take the first step and commit to baby number two, number three, and so on and so forth. I know that as soon as a pregnancy […] happens, the Lord will say: ‘An addition to the family! I’ve got to raise their salary and make sure their boss gives them a bonus.’” At the end of the service, Natalya Moskvitina speaks, asking the churchgoers to pray for the foundation’s future.
On October 21, 2023, the St. Vladimir’s Church Foundation hosted a run “to protect the lives of unborn children.” All funds raised went to Women for Life.
We asked Natalia Vasilievich, an Orthodox theologian and member of Christians Against the War, how dissident Christians feel about abortion. There’s no one consensus, but many Christians, including Natalia, don’t believe in banning abortion. Some Christians consider themselves “pro-life” and believe abortion to be a sin but oppose abortion bans. Instead of talking people out of abortions, they chose to channel their activism into creating conditions that put women in a position of strength.
That means women having the necessities and support to make an informed reproductive choice — without others pressuring them or imposing their views. Additionally, Natalia says, countries should promote sex education and access to birth control, including emergency contraceptives — otherwise, women won’t have bodily autonomy or know what to do if they’re sexually active.
Natalia Vasilievich believes that those who are “truly pro-life” wouldn’t force others to give birth or support wars. “You’d think the whole Orthodox and pro-life movement would be out on the streets protesting the war. Because it’s war that ends life, brings destruction, and violates human dignity.”
Supporting wars and claiming to protect human life are mutually exclusive things, Natalia says. Pro-life movements that endorse war often invoke other narratives, demographic or patriotic, that treat human beings as numbers or cannon fodder. On top of that, pro-life organizations often use conspiracy theories to support their arguments: “In their world, there’s the LGBT lobby, the New World Order, the Freemasons — whatever bad guys you like — out there. For them, being ‘pro-life’ is just one part of the struggle for family values, for having traditional families, for families having many children.
The Russian Orthodox Church is not doing what it should be doing. You think the problem is that women aren’t having enough babies? How about we save the lives that are being destroyed by war first. This really gets me down, because death isn’t the only thing that happens to men in war—some go home to be domestic abusers. The issue here isn’t abortion. It’s the destruction of families and of society and a whole.”
Epilogue
Sometimes Natalya Moskvitina posts tragic stories about the foundation’s clients — for example, the story of a baby who was born but survived only a few days because of congenital health problems.
“Natasha is in her 32nd week, expecting a boy who’s been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. His kidneys are not working. Natasha’s not making amniotic fluid. Before I got there, she started an amnioinfusion, which will reduce the baby’s risk for other health issues and help his lungs open if he’s born prematurely.
Natasha and Ruslan are against aborting and plan to fight for their future son’s life. Even if few people manage to understand or support them. They got the usual advice — to ‘terminate’ the pregnancy. Natasha’s already lost one son: Sasha, who was born with the same exact condition around 5 years ago. He lived for three days and was baptized. But Sasha’s many health issues proved fatal, and he died.”
Not all the women that the foundation manages to talk out of aborting are happy with their decision. Here’s one of their stories:
Read the translation
June 13, 2022:
Knocked up again a year later 😒😒😒 I’m not ready mentally or physically 😒😒😒 Three kids what a cluster f**k 😒
I had so many plans for this year, so much I wanted to do 😒
Me and the husband’s relationship is already on the rocks and now I’m pregnant again too. And it looks like it’s gonna be rough like my first one. 4-5 weeks in and I already have abruption…
I’ve been totally out of it sobbing for 3 days, all I want is to fall asleep and not wake up 😒😒😒
March 18, 2023:
Post-partum depression is that you??
Completely hating my life and then I start hating myself for hating my life…
Goddamn groundhog day, no time for myself or my interests. The exhaustion. The irrepressible rage that I’m not living how I want to, feeling like they imposed this crap on me, all this happy family and three kids!!! three, Carl!!! when I never liked kids and I have no idea how I got so many. Can’t deal with my husband who can do whatever he feels like, party on his bday (when I spent mine giving birth!!!), go to events, meet up with friends, work out, have fun. I’m just getting angrier and angrier, mad at the whole world, my brain is saying “just think, you’re living the dream” and the rest of me is howling with resentment
I’m about to lose my shit 😒😒😒
We can’t confirm how many of the foundation’s clients have found themselves in a similar situation. Not many people are comfortable sharing their failures or struggles as a mother.
We see that Russian pro-life initiatives are aligning themselves with the government’s demographic agenda. Neither see interfering in women’s private lives as something to be embarrassed about. In this light, the Ministry of Health’s 2023 order putting medication abortion on the controlled substances list is not at all surprising: every pregnancy terminated, as Moskvitina has said, must be documented by the state.
“The government wants to know who is getting abortions and how many. So now people will only be able to get abortion pills by prescription. A doctor has to prescribe them — which means they’ll mandate a one-week waiting period and therapy sessions as well. […] And, most importantly, the black market will disappear.”
A Women for Life staffer told us that grassroots pro-life initiatives and non-profits are now enjoying more support from the government, in part because “demographic and national security issues have gotten a lot more urgent.” Still, she believes that government absorption of non-profits is an unlikely scenario.
Though the foundation’s volunteers and staff may try to influence women’s reproductive choices, they are in no hurry to become responsible for their potential impact on mothers’ futures. Postpartum depression, the weighty responsibility of another person’s life, having to adjust your plans, health issues, family conflicts—not even the foundation’s psychological, material, and legal aid can solve all those issues. Nor, ultimately, can the foundation parent or provide for the children it has “saved.”
Psychologists and researchers agree that support for pregnant women should not involve persuasion or scare tactics. The priority is to listen to each woman’s needs, concerns, and fears — without ever imposing one’s beliefs, values, or life strategies onto her.
Those who come in contact with Women for Life see their fates become pawns in an ideological war that prizes carrying to term over women’s health, well-being, and individual desires. Every pregnancy carried to term is capital that the foundation can convert into grants, donations, and rapport with state initiatives and institutions. Which is why the foundation’s homepage doesn’t showcase women they’ve helped — instead, it’s all about the number of “babies saved.”
What might an abortion ban lead to? And how do we push back against the restrictions that have already been put in place?
First and foremost, a ban could lead to illegal abortions. Bans often lead to an increase in maternal and newborn mortality, as well as to an increase in infanticides—as the Soviet example shows. The United States, where some conservative states have rolled back women’s reproductive rights, has also seen increases in maternal mortality and an upsurge of threats and violence towards doctors who perform abortions.
Researchers also note that, as compared to women who receive abortions, women who are denied abortions because of restrictive laws are more likely to live in poverty and to need state welfare assistance.
We believe that restricting women’s reproductive rights is unacceptable. Motherhood is a right, not a duty. Here is a list of reproductive rights initiatives in Russia:
1. Feminist Anti-War Resistance’s petition to protect the right to abortion, signed by over 55,000 people.
2. Kaliningrad feminists’ petition against a regional law banning abortions, signed by over 36,000 people.
3. A “Know Your Rights” brochure for women’s health centers that includes information about women’s rights and commentary from an OB-GYN.
4. The Emergency Contraception Storage Fund.
5. “Go Birth Your Own Soldiers!” leaflets; safe distribution tips available here.
Article by Aida Zhivykh
