In Stavropol, Orthodox youth holds picket against abortions

Today, at the territorial consultative and diagnostic centre in Stavropol, a picket was held by the Orthodox youth movement "Soboryane" demanding legislative ban on abortions and encouraging large families.

The sanctioned picket began after ten in the morning and brought together about a dozen young men and women dressed in bright blue and yellow shirts of the movement "Soboryane" decorated by the logo of the movement - church domes-cupolas at the background of rising sun.

Two young men came out to the crowded sidewalk of Lenin Street and handed out leaflets to passers-by. One of the leaflets, printed on glossy paper, contained a colour photo: a provocatively dressed girl getting into an expensive car at the background of inscriptions of McDonald's, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, "Sex in the city", while on the opposite side of the street we can see the church, with women in headscarves with many children walking in the yard.

Also young men handed out leaflets entitled "The Diary of Unborn Child", "Consequences of Abortion" and containing excerpts from "The Word about Abortions" by the well-known Petersburg priest Alexander Zakharov.

Other activists unfolded homemade posters in front of the diagnostic centre with slogans against abortion, for example, "Abortion is a legalized infanticide".

The public order was ensured by several policemen; the action lasted for over an hour.

Its organizer Igor Kochubeev, 24, an activist of the "Soboryane", told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that he is a post-graduate trainee in the specialty "Psychology" in one of the universities of Stavropol. He is an Orthodox Christian and has long been worried about the ethical and psychological aspect of the abortion issue.

According his story, their movement has been consistently supporting the demand to ban by the law abortions in Russia, except for a small number of medical indications.

Actions to ban abortions are regularly held in recent years in Stavropol by the movement "Soboryane" with an active support of the Stavropol Eparchy and the Terek Cossack Army. Thus, in early June last year, within the international action against abortion "Save doomed to death", the Orthodox youth organized a series of pickets in different parts of Stavropol and distributed leaflets.

On September 1 this year, members of the movements "Soboryane" and "Warriors of Life" handed out leaflets to students in front of the main building of the North-Caucasian Federal University.

According to the Ministry of Public Health of the Stavropol Territory, the number of abortions made in the territory is on the decline: over the last six years the drop made 48 percent (in 2005, a total of 27,230 abortions were made, and last year - 18,454); the count of abortions in minors and nulliparous goes down proportionally.