Say Anything Blog

This is sad

MOSNEWS.COM
Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday quoting the country’s highest-ranking obstetrician.

About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “Many more” abortions weren’t reported.

They cite some reasons for this...

“The appearance of a first child pushes many families into poverty,” Kulakov said today in the government’s official newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta. “Potential parents first try to start a career, stand on their feet and so forth.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing hyperinflation and depression deprived millions of Russians of their incomes and savings and discouraged couples from having children. By 2000, the number of pensioners in Europe’s most populous country outnumbered children and adolescents for the first time.

The increase in poverty and the decline in the quality of health care since the fall of communism have left about six million women and 4 million men — seven percent of Russia’s 145 million people — incapable of having children.

There are some more statistics in the article that go a long way toward explaining how this issue came to be. Of course, not having sex might help reduce these issues.

One thing is for sure... It sure would suck to live there.