Posted on 08/23/2005 9:27:11 AM PDT by lizol
Russians, Dying Younger, Have More Abortions Than Children
Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, according to 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.
``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 -- 7 percent of Russia's 145 million people -- incapable of having children.
``This is a critical level,'' Kulakov said.
$300 a Month
The average monthly wage in Russia is about $300 and one in four people live below the poverty line. President Vladimir Putin has said one of his main goals during his second term is to lift more people out of poverty.
Part of the problem is a lack of job prospects. Careers traditionally favored by Russian women, such as in education and medicine, no longer pay a decent salary, which leads to fewer births and ultimately a smaller population, Kulakov said.
For every 1,000 Russians there are 16 deaths and just 10.6 births, a gap that isn't being filled by immigrants, leading to a population decline of about 750,000 to 800,000 a year.
Out of every 1,000 Russian newborn babies, more than 12 die before they are one year old, an infant mortality rate five times higher than in Iceland and three to four times higher than in Finland, Sweden, Spain and France, Russia's Federal Statistics Service reported last week.
Only Turkey, with almost 40 deaths for every 1,000 newborns, and former Soviet satellite states Georgia, Romania, Moldova and Azerbaijan have higher infant mortality rates than Russia.
The average Russian man now dies at 58.8, the shortest life expectancy in Europe and five years fewer than 15 years ago, the Statistics Service said.
Europe's longest-surviving men, in Iceland, outlive Russians by more than two decades, dying at the average age of 79. Russian women have the fourth-lowest life expectancy in Europe, 72 years, the service said, citing its own data and figures from the World Health Organization and European Union.
This sounds familiar... oh yes, just like Iraq. I guess we never should have bothered with the cold war either. Why don't we all just become cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Looks like it is about time for the Russians to start making land grants to Germans again, so there will be somebody to farm the land productively. If I could get some of the family lands back in the Volga, I might go for it!
Now that the Orthodox Church has a free hand in things over there---what kind of weight does it carry in society in Russia?
As if our so-called journalists could recognize that Godless atheistic communism always leads to hopelessness and despair. But no, they wouldn't recognize or acknowledge that axiom for all the tea in Godless atheistic communist China.....
Alcohol has to be a factor as well.
Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician.
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So prospects of poverty lead people to litteraly throw the baby with the bath water and commit suicide.
The abortion and perversion cult is what brings poverty. I'd rather worry aout 10 children than a single out of control pedophile humanist spending homosexual spouse.
There is a reason for poverty, and it is in evil deeds. Those who believe in life work hard to make it happen. This in itself is a fight against poverty.
Alcohol causes impotence and has been cited (not conclusively) as a factor in low sperm count.
In men dying at the age of 58.
The Russian Orthodox church is not free at all, still controlled by the successor to the KGB.
Alexei II talks just like a Communist.
The aftershocks of communism may last for generations. If the Russians need a population with a positive outlook on life and high fertility rate, we could ship them at least 20 million wetbacks.
Under the Soviets, much of the wealth of soviet satellite nations was shipped to mother Russia - You could find Romanian Brandy in Moscow but none in Romania...Mother Russia was always first on any distribution list - and that has gone away...
There now are fewer germans extant, than at the end of WWII.
They had an enormously high abortion rate under Communism, too. That is, those who weren't too drunk to even procreate.
Soviet communism was actually socially a pretty conservative society. For example, homosexuality was a criminal offence under Soviet law to the very of the Soviet Union. Western leftism is a different animal than Soviet communism.
the life expectancy in ussr had begun to declin by 1980.
Unfortunately the Russian orthodox Church has been controlled by the government since the days of Peter the great---so you can't blame it all on the commies.
Most of Europe will not have "Europeans" by the end of the century.
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