When I emigrated from newly post-Soviet Russia, I stayed in touch with some of my classmates. Years later, I began hearing about our mutual acquaintances, girls in their late teens and early twenties at that time, getting abortions in the half-a-dozen range. The very existence of these rumors was shocking.
The epidemic of terminating pregnancies as a form of birth control remains one of the biggest challenges to Russia’s demographic struggle. Arkady Mamontov’s new prolife film, simply called Abortion, is the latest attempt to raise awareness about this issue. Whether the film is independent is largely irrelevant, as it premiered on state channel Rossiya during last Sunday’s popular television talk show, Special Correspondent. The host, Maria Sittel, also seemed quite supportive of this filmmaker during the follow-up expert discussion panel.
This graphic documentary examines Russia’s private clinics, which illegally end unwanted pregnancies long after the first-trimester limit, including on-camera admissions to destroying just about fully formed babies at 22, or so, weeks. A particularly disturbing moment involves a medical staff lecturing an undercover correspondent, pretending to be 15-weeks pregnant, regarding the ethics of her decision “to murder her baby” all the while agreeing to perform the procedure.
Mamontov is no stranger to controversy, and this documentary fits the mould: not because of its shock value per se, but, rather, the filmmaker’s bold assertion regarding one major cause of this epidemic. He points his finger at the Western political establishment. Not only has the United States’ and, to a lesser extent, the European Union’s foreign policy been aimed at encircling Russia in the past twenty years, he argues, but the West has been attempting to depopulate this country from the inside.
His main culprit is organizations like Planned Parenthood. Instead of “leading a ‘brave and angry’ stance with regard to people’s right to access to good sexual and reproductive health care and services”, as the IPPF website claims, this institution has been responsible for dispensing irresponsible and potentially deadly advice to unsuspecting Russian women, whom the filmmaker interviews.
Why is his country a target? Mamontov tells his viewers to read Brzezinski: it is unfair for Russia alone to access all the rich natural resources within its immense territory. This geopolitical reasoning allows the documentary to avoid a preachy pro-life tone so typical of this genre.
However, Arkady Viktorovich never had the onus of proof that these insatiable Eurasian desires exist. Rather than emphasizing Russia’s uniqueness, he should have elaborated on the civilizational discontents, as Freud would say, that drive these institutions well beyond their intended raison d’être—and not only in Russia.
But, at least shock value gets the ratings!
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Babypolitics
When I emigrated from newly post-Soviet Russia, I stayed in touch with some of my classmates. Years later, I began hearing about our mutual acquaintances, girls in their late teens and … [Read More]
Posted by Nina Kouprianova on October 28, 2009
The Usual Suspects