Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 26 – Despite Putin’s call for Russians to have more children, citizens of his country are buying up contraceptives out of fear that these products will soon disappear from stores in Russian cities and towns, exacerbating a trend that began six years ago, Moskovsky komsomolets reports.
Part of the increase in purchases of oral contraceptives reflects an attempt by Russians to get away of rapid price increases in this sector, but medical officials say that even with the rises in prices for birth control pills, Russian women have been using them despite calls for them to give birth to more children (mk.ru/social/2023/10/26/rossiyane-rinulis-za-kontraceptivami.html).
But a larger part, medical experts say, reflects a fear that the Russian government will extend its ban on “day after pills” to other forms of birth control. That ban doesn’t go into effect until September of next year, but reports about it have led many Russians to conclude that it has already happened.
Also playing into such fears is the government’s effort to restrict abortions to government clinics. Many Russians fear that this is only a first step toward banning abortions more generally, and therefore they are purchasing birth control medications in order to avoid being forced into an untenable position.
In short, the newspaper says, trying to force people to have children when they don’t want to has started to backfire. Russians are trying to find ways to ensure that they won’t have to have children regardless of what the Kremlin says and that they assume that any steps the regime takes now are on a path of even greater restrictions in the future.
And this is a warning for the future: the Putin regime may as the Stalin regime once did ban legal abortions, but it won’t prevent people from seeking prophylactic measures or from getting illegal ones if those fail or aren’t available.
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