100 Years Ago: Abortion Legalized in the Land of the Soviets

“This tragic day of the 100th anniversary of the legalization of abortion in our country cannot be forgotten.” The press release published on November 17, 2020 by the Russian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CDER) weighs its words seriously.

In fact, November 18, 1920 - the day when the Soviet regime made abortion legal - marks “a first in the history of mankind, since from that point on the murder of the unborn child became a means of protection of ‘women’s health and the interests of the race,’” recall the Russian prelates.

Banned under the Czars, abortion in Soviet Russia experienced a chaotic course: legalized in 1920, banned again under Stalin in 1936, then again authorized and democratized as a method of contraception starting in 1955... Proof that Marxism attaches little importance to the principle of contradiction, but uses revolutionary pragmatism.

Russian Catholic bishops again recall that the 1920 legislation had far-reaching consequences, since from there, “it has become a common view in society that abortion can be justified also by economic hardships, that it is a medical procedure, and that it is almost an ordinary act.”

In order not to forget the gravity of the crimes against the unborn child, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia decided to organize a day of prayer on November 18, which is also a call to “repentance” and to “conversion,” for crimes of which the number of victims “exceeds those of past world wars,” states the note published on November 17.

Indeed, if we count the number of abortions in Russia over the past 100 years, we obtain the staggering number of nearly 310 million victims ... Minimum number, because for some years, the figures are still kept secret .

However, for more than twenty years, the government, pushed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Moscow - the Orthodox - has sought to reduce the number of abortions, with some success, the number having fallen below one million since 2014. But relative success, because births are in sharp decline in Russia, this perhaps explains that, at least in part.

Since 1920, the struggle for the “right to abortion” has become an ideological issue in which almost all Western societies in the process of secularization have been engulfed, offering a singular echo to the words heard in 1917 by the seers of Fatima, from the very mouth of the Virgin Mary: “if you accept my requests, Russia will be converted, and you will have peace; otherwise, it will spread its errors throughout the world…”