Patriarch Kirill's solution to increasing birth rates: Abortion “to be impossible without the consent” of the husband
Patriarch Kiril (left) and Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova, on a visit to Transnistria, 2013, Photo: Denisov Vadim / TASS / Profimedia
The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, on Thursday supported the legal prohibition of abortion in Russia if the woman does not obtain her husband's consent, EFE informs, according to Agerpres.
“I think it would be right that abortion should be impossible by the exclusive decision of the mother, without the father's consent, in the case, of course, that the marriage was registered,” said Patriarch Kirill, speaking before the Senate.
He argued that the woman who makes such a decision may be “in a state of imbalance”, considering – he added – that “women are more emotionally vulnerable”, especially at the beginning of pregnancy.
“And that's why it's important to have a husband nearby who can say at the right time: 'No, listen, we'll manage to move forward, we'll earn some money, there's no need, don't do it'. The husband's words must be present in the discussion about whether or not to commit this act,” the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church emphasized.
Patriarch Kirill quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying that “the decision about children should be made by the whole family, not by one parent.”
The Russian patriarch said that if the authorities really want the birth rate to increase, they cannot turn a blind eye to what prevents the Russian people from “becoming great again”, namely the lack of “a sufficient number of people in such a vast territory”.
Kremlin party deputies, who estimated that “about a million children” are not born due to termination of pregnancy, supported the motion to include in a law the need for the father's consent to carry out an abortion.
A little over a year ago, reports emerged in the Russian media that pregnant women in the country began receiving a letter from the patriarch as part of a national anti-abortion campaign to combat the severe demographic crisis facing the country.
Russian authorities are aiming to counter a sharp decline in the birth rate, linked both to the uncertainty caused by the war and the “demographic hole” Russia finds itself in once women born in the 1990s reach childbearing age, a period that also saw a sharp drop in births.
The Russian government is promoting a number of projects aimed at increasing the number of large families and has approved a law banning the propaganda of the “childfree” ideology that aims to recognize the right of women not to have children, among other measures.
President Vladimir Putin, whose military campaign in Ukraine claimed the lives of more than 300,000 men, according to independent sources, advocates that every Russian woman should have at least three children.
