SHAPIRO: Technically, Polish law allows abortion in cases of rape. However, according to the Polish Ministry of Health, the country has never had more than three such cases in one year. Kacpura says the government makes it virtually impossible to terminate a pregnancy, even for rape victims. Statistics like these make the region a new territory for American anti-abortion activists. The clinic also stands out in other ways. It recently achieved one of the lowest abortion rates in the country. SHAPIRO: Zuzanna Dziuban told me that the name of her band, Aunt Basia, comes from a Kenyan collective called Auntie Jane. This group takes its name from the Jane Collective, the underground organization that allowed people access to abortion in the United States before it was legal. The Jane Collective was dissolved after the Supreme Court rejected abortion in Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Editor-in-chief Pohorelova, for example, said she had «not many» abortions, «only four or five.» A mother of three daughters, the eldest of whom has just turned 18, she had her last abortion two weeks ago. She said her IUD failed.
«[Ukrainian refugees crossing the border] are completely unprepared for the situation here, they don`t know the law. Even if someone somewhere has read an article about abortion in Poland, [many] still think, «OK, so they don`t do abortion on demand, but if there`s a good reason, they will,» she says. Despite the grim conditions, a young Ukrainian anti-abortion activist who tried to dissuade women from making her decision that day was unlucky. When they found out she was 20 and had no children, «they told her to have three children, feed and clothe them with our $30 monthly salary, and then come back and talk to us,» Pohorelova recalls. SHAPIRO: People in other countries can legally send abortion pills to Poland, but here Litvinenko speaks very cautiously. «When women who need abortion pills cross the border, it really depends on who gets them,» she says. «If it`s progressive or feminist, then they can connect them with the right people. But if it`s a random man or someone religious, then absolutely not. Either they don`t care, or they say they are God`s angel and you have to keep it. Prior to 1991, abortion in Ukraine was regulated by the abortion laws of the Soviet Union. The laws have not changed since then. Abortion rates increased from 109 abortions per 1000 women aged 15 to 44 in 1986 to 80.9 in 1991, 67.2 in 1996[1] and 27.5 in 2004.
[2] In 2010, the abortion rate was 21.2 abortions per 1000 women aged 15 to 44. [3] In 2014, the abortion rate in Ukraine fell to 14.89 per 1000 women aged 15 to 44. [4] Abortion rates in Ukraine and Belarus have converged in recent years, leading to a huge rift with post-Soviet Russia. [5] [Note 1] SHAPIRO: Do you say this carefully because in Poland it is a crime to give someone an abortion pill? Abortion in Ukraine is legal upon request during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Between the 12th and 28th centuries. During the week, an abortion is possible for a variety of reasons, including medical, social and personal, and for any reason with the approval of a medical board. [1] Ukrainian health professionals see contraception and the widespread dissemination of information about family planning as their best weapon in the «war on abortion» they declared three years ago. In Soviet times, birth control devices were of poor quality, if they could be found. Plastic IUDs have often failed. Rubber condoms resembling balloons have earned the nickname «galoshes» and the eternal dislike of men.
The diaphragms were distributed without spermicides. Members of Poland`s anti-abortion movement were also at the border to welcome the refugees. In the first weeks of the war, Life and Family volunteers began distributing leaflets in refugee reception sites representing dismembered fetuses and citing abortion as the greatest threat to peace. The leaflets also advised pregnant women to report anyone who offered them an abortion to the police. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the aired version of this report, we wrongly said that Zuzanna Dziuban most often sends pills to people in Poland who need abortions. In fact, they mainly buy pills from an organization called Women Help Women; Dziuban does not send pills himself. The sound has been updated.] Oksana Litvinenko asked to meet us at our hotel in Warsaw, not at her home or office, because anti-abortion protesters have personally targeted her, so she is taking precautions. My colleague interprets as she speaks. When the first Russian bombs fell on Ukraine, Myroslava Marchenko was a gynecologist in a private clinic in Kiev. The next day, one of her patients was supposed to have an abortion after prenatal tests showed a high probability of Down syndrome. SHAPIRO: She is a Ukrainian-Polish interpreter. And when refugee women have to terminate a pregnancy, they confide in it.
But she says they rarely ask directly. They use euphemisms. Fedotovich, for example, took a medical view, saying, «So many abortions are not good for women`s health.» DZIUBAN : I have the limited privilege of living in a country where access to abortion is better than in Poland. So I feel compelled to share this privilege. For example, dictator Joseph Stalin banned abortion in 1936 when the millions of deaths from starvation and mass executions under his rule began to outpace births. The ban was lifted in 1955, two years after Stalin`s death, and the Soviet Union experienced its own postwar baby boom. Today, «family life» classes are slowly being accepted in high schools. And a growing number of clinics are advising pregnant women about the medical risks of multiple abortions and giving them information about birth control. After the USSR legalized abortion in 1921, it was quickly accepted by increasingly educated and urbanized Soviet women.
Ukrainian women over the age of 20 have high rates of infertility, which many health officials attribute to reproductive damage caused by multiple abortions. Since then, abortion has been possible on demand, paid for by the state, up to the age of 12. Week of pregnancy. Unlike the old Kiev clinic that creaks here, however, many abortion facilities are non-sterile, underserved, and corrupt. Although services are technically free, clinic staff often have to be bribed to provide anesthetics. But legal abortion has fallen in and out of official Soviet favor over the years, seemingly alongside rising and falling death rates. While in the United States, three babies are born for every aborted pregnancy, in Ukraine, Russia and other parts of the former Soviet sixth in the world, there are two abortions for every birth. Estimates vary, but most experts say the average Ukrainian woman, like her Russian sisters, has an average of four or five abortions in her lifetime. Some have 10 or more. This article related to abortion is a heel. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
ARI SHAPIRO (HOST): Imagine crossing a border and discovering that the reproductive rights you once took for granted are now a crime. For millions of Ukrainians, this discovery occurred when they fled war in their home country and gained a foothold here in Poland. Ukraine has very liberal abortion laws. In Poland, it is almost completely illegal. But while Poland`s anti-abortion efforts have the weight of the government behind them, there is another movement, secretive, clandestine and punishable by prison sentences. You see it right here at the border if you know where to look. «Priests don`t know that due to stress, poor nutrition, radiation from Chernobyl and previous abortions, very few Ukrainian women have regular menstrual cycles,» the therapist said. This lack of understanding of the crushing burden on women in this part of the world is likely to afflict Western anti-abortion groups, especially those like Human Life International, who oppose contraceptive use. Respondents expressed concern about limited access to or denial of SRH services and the limited choice where such services were available. Participants felt that their right to access SRH care was compromised and that there were concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on maternal and fetal health. Human Life International claims to have 20 centers in Ukraine, but few people familiar with the situation here believe that Ukraine or Russia are fertile ground for widespread anti-abortion movements or open legal bans such as those imposed two years ago in neighboring heavily Catholic Poland.
Towards the end of a lengthy interview in 2019 during his political campaign, Volodymyr Zelensky (now President of Ukraine) was asked about abortion rights. The interviewer mentioned to Zelensky that in Central and Eastern Europe, laws are often passed that cause a public outcry, and said that there were large demonstrations in Poland, for example, when the Polish government wanted to ban abortion. Zelensky said abortion should not be banned, abortion is a personal choice and there must be less interference with human freedom. [7] As evidence and reports of rape and sexual assault of Ukrainian citizens continue to emerge, activists and politicians in Poland are increasingly concerned about how rape victims seeking safety in Poland can obtain a legal abortion if necessary. «She called me and said, `Oh my God, I don`t know what to do because time is running out and my pregnancy is growing, but I don`t want to raise this child because it`s war and I can`t do it,`» Marchenko recalled.
