cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45052058

Russia is waging a renewed — and increasingly overt — campaign of reproductive pressure on women, says Irina Fainman, an activist and founder of the Emergency Contraception Storage Fund. In the name of boosting birth rates, authorities have spent the last year seeking to discourage women from having abortions while steadily decreasing access to safe procedures.

Measures that were once quietly implemented are now openly acknowledged. In November, for example, the Russian Orthodox metropolitan in Saratov issued a directive assigning a priest to every women’s health clinic in the city. Their task: dissuading women from having abortions by framing the procedure as sinful. “In the past, officials avoided drawing attention to priests working with women’s health clinics,” Fainman says. “Now they talk about it openly.”

Similar church-led anti-abortion campaigns have appeared elsewhere. In the Vologda region, the local perinatal center has held weekly prayer services before an icon known as the “Helper in Childbirth” since December. (The regional governor, Georgy Filimonov, is known for his anti-abortion views.)

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