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The number of abortions in Russia has decreased over the last 15 years but many women in the country continue to see abortion as a means of birth control, said Anatoly Vishnevksy, the head of a Russian demographic centre.
He was speakingthe day after the governor of the U.S. state of South Dakota signed a controversial bill banning abortion that could undermine abortion rights across the entire United States.
’In 1990 Russia recorded 114 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 and 50. Now we’re recording 45 abortions per 1,000 women,” Vishnevsky said.
He added that there were 206 abortions for every 100 live births in Russia in 1990, but the number almost halved to 122 abortions for every 100 live births in 2003.
Although the reductions in the number of abortions is a great "success" Vishnevsky said, he indicated more needed to be done to reduce the numbers. Vishnevsky proposed more educational efforts aimed at improving contraception use among young Russians.
Russians were “sometimes violently opposed to family planning and sex education programs” and abortion was “still used as a means of conception”, he explained.
The Russian government undertook a sexual education campaign starting in the 1990s, which Vishnevsky said was responsible for lowering the total number of annual abortions in the nation from 2.3 million abortions in 2003 to 1.61 million in 2005. In general, Russia’s population is shrinking. The country now has 143 million inhabitants, six million fewer than when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
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