Putin's Adoption Ban and the Soviet Legacy

     A recent National Catholic Register article places a large part of responsibility for the Russian ban on adoptions to Americans beyond political tensions with Vladimir Putin, and incriminates the Soviet history of "unconditional annulment of all laws against abortion."  The Communists felt these laws necessary to achieve their ideal of equality of the sexes, disregarding the possibility that the concept of equality could encompass differences and complementarity. Therefore, by 1934, Moscow women were having three abortions for every live birth. The toll was so staggering that an appalled Joseph Stalin, the legendary mass murderer, actually banned abortion in 1936, fearing a vanishing populace.  Nikita Khrushchev reinstituted legalized abortions in 1955.
    The fact is that Russia's population is plummeting, and both Putin and the Russian Duma foresee problems.  When Communism ended in the 1990s, runaway abortion didn't.  Among other problems, Russia faces a fertility crisis--13% of the population and rising have infertility issues.  "In nearly three out of four cases," said the article, citing Russian health experts, "infertility is attributed to the woman, typically because of complications from one or more abortions."
     How tragically ironic that here in contemporary America, we have embraced the Communists' false premise that women need unfettered access to contraception and abortion in order to be equal to men.  We may have won the Cold War only to lose the peace. Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, and all holy Saints and Angels, please pray for us!