“It can harm women and put their lives at risk,” Oxana Pushkina, a former Russian MP, told openDemocracy. She added: “Russia is using the most aggressive technologies of Western conservatives and anti-abortion fighters as a carbon copy.”
Popova from Ethics and Technology said that the spread of APR in Russia was connected to pressure “from pro-life organisations”: “They believe that the birth rate is more important than women’s health and the health of their children.”
In response to questions from openDemocracy, Heartbeat International said “the protocol used in the abortion pill reversal process is nothing new. [...] Progesterone has been used routinely and safely with pregnancy since the 1950s.”
“More than 2,500 lives have been saved thanks to the abortion pill reversal protocol,” the group claimed.
Growing APR network in Russia
Abortions are legal in Russia as an elective procedure, free of charge, up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and later under special circumstances. The country had the highest number of abortions per capita (37.4 per 1,000 women aged 15–44), according to data published in 2013 by the UN.
Now, almost 100 years after Soviet Russia became the first country in the world to legalise abortion, anti-abortion narratives are back.
President Putin is a well-known defender of “traditional values”. In October, Moscow joined the anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, initiated by the Donald Trump administration. On the same day, Republicans in the US Congress introduced resolutions insisting that there should be no international right to abortion.
According to articles on the websites of Pregnancy Help News (“powered by Heartbeat International”) and the National Catholic Register, Russia’s “growing” APR network is overseen by Dr. Alexey Fokin from St Petersburg, who promotes the method through Peredumala.ru, which he founded.
Fokin has been helping “reverse chemical abortions” for five years with the help of “three physicians and several registered nurses in multiple regions of Russia,” Pregnancy Help News claims.
Peredumala.ru encourages women to buy progesterone from a pharmacy, suggesting that they can avoid the need for a prescription by saying they were “told to buy it in the hospital”.
In 2017, Fokin founded Dve Poloski (Russian for ‘two lines’, in reference to a pregnancy test), a “regional public organisation […] to protect children, pregnant women and traditional family values.”
He is also linked to the website Postabort.ru, which provides references to books, articles, research and stories that describe the alleged negative psychological effects of abortion on women’s mental health.
Fokin described our findings as “absolutely stupid,” “mistakes” and “lies”, but did not comment more specifically.
The phone number for the APR hotline on Peredumala.ru is identical to the hotline listed on the website of the anti-abortion programme Spasi Zhizn (‘save a life’), where priests are listed as responders alongside doctors and lawyers. The programme was launched in 2017 by Za Zhizn! (‘for life’), a national ‘crisis pregnancy centre’ that is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Za Zhizn! claims to “ensure the protection of children from conception to birth, approve traditional family values” and “solve demographic problems”. Its leader Sergey Chesnokov has called abortion “murder”. In 2017, he was told by President Putin: “What you are doing in terms of supporting pregnant women – to decide whether to leave a child or not – is absolutely right. […] I am ready to do everything in order to support you in this part of your work.”
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