Trailer for the documentary Killing Girls (so named because all of the babies aborted during the filming were girls) about the prevalence of late term abortions in Russia (warning: some nudity and just disturbing content):

I saw a little bit of this doc well over a year ago in this video – didn’t know it was part of a bigger project. This is a brutally honest look at abortion from those who perform them such as you’ll never find coming from any Planned Parenthood here in the United States. Much to some pro-lifers’ dismay the filmmakers stopped short of providing footage of the actual abortions, but (though I haven’t seen the film in its entirety) I personally think that the testimony from the girls and some of the doctors says quite a bit even if they do not show the gory details. For example, one girl says:

When I had delivered the child and looked at it, they told me it was a girl. I kind of felt sorry for it. It was already a baby. Later I looked at the card. She was 23 cm long and weighed 500 g. She was such a big girl. A real child already…

Another doctor laments:

Physically and psychologically it’s tough. Having to kill these children…Yes, it’s legalized murder.

Though I would not exactly call it a “good” thing, at least these people are honest about exactly what it is they are doing – what “terminating a pregnancy” really means. I somehow doubt that you’ll ever get anyone from a Planned Parenthood in North America to willingly admit to you, on camera or otherwise, that they’re in the business of killing children, even if they do recognize it as such themselves and, like these Russian women, still consider it necessary.

But PP may be becoming a little more honest than they were in the past. In this under cover video obtained by Students for Life of America the PP clinic worker not only tells the prospective client that she will, in fact, be “delivering a baby” when she gets her induced labor abortion, but also informs her, when asked, that, yes, sometimes “it does happen where “it’s” (the baby) still alive (after the delivery)” but that “eventually the baby does die.” She doesn’t come right out and say they would be killing a child, but it’s also not exactly the kind of language you would expect from those who typically defend their practice by dehumanizing the unborn child as some sort of unformed mass of cells or preferring the less “emotionally charged” term fetus.

If “Killing Girls” (which has neither a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” angle to it) shows us anything, it’s that abortion is not some right to be celebrated. It is a serious, emotional, painful procedure that not only takes the life of an innocent human being, but damages the others involved in the process as well – mothers, fathers, grandparents, doctors, nurses…society. When 80% of Russian women have 2-10 abortions each, you can bet that has an impact on all of Russian society. Although in most respects abortion is, as Jill Stanek puts it, more of a result of a decaying culture than it is the cause of it. Some still think that better contraceptive use is the answer in this kind of situation (abortion is the number one method of birth control in Russia), but that only masks the real problem here – mostly, moral and religious relativism (if not an out-right rejection of the two) and a false idea of sexual freedom.

Keep these Russian women (and, really, all of Russia) in your prayers.

See Jill Stanek’s review of Killing Girls

Order the movie