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{"id":11253,"date":"2011-12-23T15:36:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T20:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/?p=11253"},"modified":"2011-12-23T15:38:04","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T20:38:04","slug":"cultural-legacy-of-communism-armenian-women-still-have-average-of-8-and-as-high-as-20-abortions-in-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/cultural-legacy-of-communism-armenian-women-still-have-average-of-8-and-as-high-as-20-abortions-in-lifetime\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Legacy of Communism: Armenian Women Still Have Average of 8 and as High as 20 Abortions in Lifetime"},"content":{"rendered":"

$\"\"$ <\/a>When the Berlin Wall fell everyone pondered the ramifications as East Germany rejoined their Western brothers and presumably in a few short years catapult Germany to even higher economic prominence. It didn’t happen. As it turned out, all it takes to weaken a culture is one generation. Sixty years can wipe values and habits that took generations to accrue. Russia proves the same point. Cultural rebuilding is a slower process than we would like, which also compels us to protect the things that remain. If the first things are lost they take a long time to restore, if ever. <\/p>\n

In the essay below writer Ben Johnson examines the abortion rates of once Christian Armenia after the call of Communism and reveals that the restoration of human value will be hard fought. Fortunately the Orthodox Church is starting to speak out. Orthodox writer and ethicist Vigen Guroian is quoted: <\/p>\n

\n
“I cannot understand why the Armenian people are committing genocide against themselves now, when they\u2019ve endured it.\u201d During the Armenian genocide (1915-1923), 1.5 million of the Ottoman Empire\u2019s 2 million Armenian Christians were exterminated by Muslim Turks.<\/p>\n
“What\u2019s even more sad is that the news comes out at this time of the year, at Advent and at the time of the birth of the Lord.”<\/p>\n
If the Virgin Mary had been in Armenia at this time, she probably would have been encouraged to have an abortion.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Source: Lifesite News<\/a> | Ben Johnson<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
YEREVAN, ARMENIA, December 20, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com<\/a>) – The practice of sex-selective abortion has become so deeply ingrained in the former Soviet republic of Armenia – where the median number of abortions obtained by women over 40 is a staggering eight – that the nation will soon face \u201ca deficit of women,\u201d according to a United Nations health official.<\/p>\n
A new report produced by the United Nations Population Fund, the Armenian ministry of health, and the Institute of Perinatology found that 7,000 Armenian women – or 0.8 percent of all Armenian women of child-bearing age – had elected to have sex-selective abortions since 2006. Armenia has the world\u2019s second worst ratio<\/a> of boys-to-girls in the world, second only to China, according to a World Economic Forum report. The average nation has a ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls; Armenia\u2019s average is 112 to 100.<\/p>\n
The study, \u201cPrevalence and Reasons of Sex-Selective Abortions in Armenia,\u201d estimated a loss of 1,400<\/a> future mothers. UNFPA Armenia Assistant Representative Garik Hayrapetyan told reporters<\/a> Monday, \u201cIn ten to 20 years,\u201d he said,\u201d we will face a deficit of women.\u201d <\/p>\n
He was surprised to learn that \u201chighly educated women\u201d with a comfortable salary were the most likely to choose to abort unborn female children. <\/p>\n
Dr. Vigen Guroian, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia told LifeSiteNews.com, \u201cI cannot understand why the Armenian people are committing genocide against themselves now, when they\u2019ve endured it.\u201d During the Armenian genocide (1915-1923), 1.5 million of the Ottoman Empire\u2019s 2 million Armenian Christians were exterminated by Muslim Turks. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s even more sad is that the news comes out at this time of the year, at Advent and at the time of the birth of the Lord,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Virgin Mary had been in Armenia at this time, she probably would have been encouraged to have an abortion.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dr. Guroian, who is of Armenian descent, said the debate became personal for him after the birth of his granddaughter five months ago, when he realized she may never have been born in her family\u2019s homeland. <\/p>\n
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, (PACE) passed<\/a> a resolution<\/a> in October stating that aborting unborn girls \u201creinforces a climate of violence against women,\u201d and the coercion young mothers undergo constitutes \u201ca form of psychological violence.\u201d It particularly highlighted Armenia\u2019s situation. However, the resolution deemed the practice \u201cjustified for the prevention of serious sex-linked genetic diseases.\u201d Its author, Doris Stump, instructed<\/a>, \u201cWe should be careful, however, not to use prenatal sex selection as a pretext to limit legal abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armenia\u2019s abortion rate, although lower than it was in the 1990s<\/a> and only one-third the rate of the 1980s<\/a>, remains staggeringly high. The median number of abortions for women over 40<\/a> is eight, and some women have as many as 20 abortion<\/a>s in a lifetime. <\/p>\n
Experts attribute this to the lingering influence of the Soviet Union, when abortion became the nation\u2019s primary means of birth control. Similar rates persist in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. \u201cThis is now a deeply culturally set pattern. I don\u2019t think the church could solve the problem tomorrow by speaking up,\u201d Dr. Guroian said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve voiced my anguish at the church\u2019s reticence to address this in the past,\u201d he said. \u201cPerhaps it had an excuse during the period of Soviet rule, but it\u2019s had no excuse for the past 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Western Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of North America declined to comment on this story. Representatives from the Eastern Diocese were not immediately available by deadline.<\/p>\n
However, some voices within Armenia have articulated the Christian Church\u2019s opposition to abortion. Fr. Kyuregh Talyan<\/a>, a parish priest in the Kotayk Diocese, held a press conference last month to say<\/a>, \u201cA human being begins life from the moment of conception. To me, an emotionless concept like \u2018artificial termination of pregnancy\u2019 is nothing more than homicide.\u201d Its widespread tolerance<\/a> \u201ccomes from a new religion prevailing in Europe – the religion of \u2018human rights.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The conscious decision to abort unborn girls now pervades the globe. The British medical journal The Lancet estimated some 12 million sex-selection abortions had taken place in India from 1980 to 2010<\/a>. The shortage of women has become so acute it has led to \u201c wife-sharing<\/a>.\u201d A study of the sex imbalance in India, China, and South Korea links<\/a> the absence of potential wives to increased aggression, violence, and criminal behavior among men. The Parental Non-Discrimination Act<\/a> aims to end the practice in the United States.<\/p>\n
Armenian legislators have proposed a law<\/a> forbidding doctors from disclosing the child\u2019s sex until after the cut-off time when abortions are forbidden under law<\/a>. Like much of Europe, Armenia restricts abortions to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. However, many later abortions take place, often chemical abortions induced at home<\/a> without a doctor\u2019s supervision. <\/p>\n
Yet some within Armenia emphasize the real danger is not \u201cgendercide,\u201d but abortion itself. The head of the Department of Gynecology at the Armenian-American Wellness Center, Dr. Marina Voskanyan, warned<\/a>, \u201cWomen have to know that discontinuing any pregnancy\u2026will lead to serious health issues. An abortion is a very negative phenomenon.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dr. Vahe Ter-Minasyan, an ob-gyn in Armenia, agreed: \u201cTo opt for an abortion is merely a question of ignorance. If women and their husbands knew how much damage an abortion causes to a woman\u2019s health, they would never choose it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the Berlin Wall fell everyone pondered the ramifications as East Germany rejoined their Western brothers and presumably in a few short years catapult Germany to even higher economic prominence. It didn’t happen. As it turned out, all it takes to weaken a culture is one generation. Sixty years can wipe values and habits that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[82,11,1730,13,296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11253"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11255,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253\/revisions\/11255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}