The pharmacist at one Moscow drug store shows us a dozen brands of hormonal contraceptives, most of them manufactured in Eastern Europe. There is another factor that keeps Russian women from using birth control. Many women are afraid to use hormonal birth control pills, even though we talk with them every day, says one Moscow doctor who performs abortions. Abortion, she says, can have serious side effects. Many women, she says, are not aware of those side effects but still remember the high-dosage contraceptives introduced 20 years ago, pills that had serious side effects of their own.
Fear is often the product of ignorance.
Just ask some of the young women students at Moscow State University. They prefer to do an abortion if something happens. But Russian women, and their society, are changing. Under Communism, the moral aspect of abortion officially played no role in a woman s decision to end a pregnancy. Russia s policy on abortion changed several times.