'Gay Marriage' Flops in Expanding European Union

As homosexualists in "Old Europe" and other western nations claim dominance in the culture, and the "inevitability" of same-sex "marriage," nearly all eastern European nations vehemently reject the Gay Agenda.

For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:

Church of England Sued Weeks After 'Gay Marriage' Legalized

European Union High Court Rules Gay Agenda Trumps Christianity

Supreme Court Rules Bible as 'Hate Speech' in Canada

German Parents Allow Babies to Choose Gender From Birth

In contrast, Russia Outlaws Homosexual Propaganda, Kissing

UPDATE 12/11/13: Supreme Court Rules Homosexual Behavior Illegal in India

-- From "Croatians vote against same-sex marriage" by The Associated Press (including Dusan Stojanovic and Jovana Gec of Belgrade, Serbia) 12/1/13

A majority of Croatians voted in a referendum Sunday to ban gay marriages in what is a major victory for the Catholic Church-backed conservatives in the European Union’s newest nation.

The state electoral commission, citing near complete results, said 65 percent of those who voted answered “yes” to the referendum question: “Do you agree that marriage is matrimony between a man and a woman?” About 34 percent voted against.

Croatia’s liberal president, Ivo Josipovic, said he voted against amending the constitution. Josipovic said the referendum result must be respected, but added the government is preparing a law to allow some rights to gays and lesbians living together.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "10 of 13 Newest EU States Reject 'Gay Marriage'" by Michael W. Chapman, CNSNews.com 12/9/13

Since 2004, 13 nations have joined the European Union and 10 of them either prohibit or do not recognize homosexual marriage, while the remaining three allow some legal "partnership" recognitions but not on the same level as heterosexual marriage.

Besides Croatia, 12 other nations, all from Eastern Europe, have joined the EU since 2004.  Not one of those nations legally recognizes homosexual "marriage" and only three permit some legal standing for same-sex couples.

To read the details of the countries in the article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Ukraine’s rejection of EU deal brings rival rallies at home" Posted at Euronews 11/29/13

In Ukraine, confirmation of the decision not to sign up to closer ties with the EU has brought more people onto the streets of the capital Kiev (Kyiv) – on both sides of the east-west tug of war.

Evidence of an anti-EU campaign has been visible in Kiev, with posters warning that closer ties would bring job cuts, high prices and gay marriage.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Are 'agent provocateurs' infiltrating Ukraine’s protest movement?" posted at France24 12/4/13

The protesters have tried to model themselves on 2004’s largely peaceful Orange Revolution. Despite their efforts, violence has broken out several times over the weekend. On Sunday, clashes between security forces and protesters left dozens of people injured, including around 50 journalists, scores of students, and hundreds of police officers. Some activists accuse individuals close to pro-Russian extreme right-wing parties of orchestrating the violence. Others assert that people are being paid to provoke disorder.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Gay rights is getting caught up in the geopolitics of eastern Europe" posted at Public Radio International 11/13/13

"What we are seeing in Ukraine and in a lot of other countries is an intense interest in propaganda laws that were passed in Russia," says J. Lester Feder, a foreign correspondent for Buzzfeed in Ukraine.

Feder says the anxiety over the relationship with the West is something that is playing out throughout Eastern Europe. And as the EU continues to expand towards Russia, Russia is trying very hard to hold on to its influence in this part of the world.

Feder says you really can't talk about LGBT rights in Ukraine in isolation.

"There is a much bigger geo-political debate happening," he says. "You have real competition between two very large economic and political powers in the region and this debate ... will be heavily shaped by those actors — by Russia and the EU — [and] not primarily by activists whose primary concerns are LGBT rights."

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Also read Gay Agenda Complete when Christians Muzzled, Say Homosexualists as well as Senator Ted Cruz Says the Gay Agenda Ends Christian Liberty

Russia to Outlaw Homosexual Propaganda, Kissing

The Obama administration expressed outrage at Kremlin plans to toughen laws against public displays of homosexual affection and punishment of, what the U.S. State Dept. calls, "gay rights."  Russians believe the crackdown on homosexuality is necessary to curb its damaging effects on children and young adults, but American mainstream media blame a so-called homophobic Russian Orthodox Church for "legislating morality" and thus abetting the freedom-limiting, anti-human government of Vladimir Putin.

For background, read Russians Face Extinction from Abortion

For comparison with America's ObamaNation, read Obama's National Cathedral is the Seat of Apostasy and also read Obama Raises Gay Agenda above Religious Liberty as well as Religious Liberty & Anti-Christian Totalitarianism



-- From "'Propaganda' by Gays Faces Russian Curbs Amid Unrest" by David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times 1/25/13

. . . lawmakers voted 388-1 for the bill, which would make it a federal crime in Russia to distribute “homosexual propaganda,” with violations punishable by fines of up to $16,000. One lawmaker abstained. The bill must be approved by the lower house two more times before being sent to the upper chamber. Similar laws have been approved by a number of regions and municipalities, including St. Petersburg, where supporters of the restriction tried unsuccessfully to use it to bring charges against the pop star Madonna.

The overwhelming vote fits with a larger pattern in recent months of the Russian government drawing closer to the Russian Orthodox Church and favoring so-called traditional values over individual liberties or behavior perceived as representing more modern, Western influences. This has included the aggressive prosecution and conviction of members of the punk band Pussy Riot for a stunt in Moscow’s main cathedral, and legislation imposing new restrictions on the Internet in the name of protecting children from pornography.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Police detain 20 as Russia’s Duma approves controversial anti-gay legislation" by The Associated Press 1/25/13

Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, but homophobia remains high in the country. Authorities often ban gay rallies and parades.

Those behind the bill say minors need to be protected from “homosexual propaganda” because they are unable to evaluate the information critically.

Some lawmakers and public figures have accused gays of contributing to the fall in Russia’s already low birth rates, and have argued that they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled.

According to opinion polls last year by the respected Levada Center, almost two thirds of Russians find homosexuality “morally unacceptable and worth condemning.” And about half were found to be against gay rallies and same-sex marriage, while almost a third thought homosexuality is the result of “a sickness or a psychological trauma.”

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Russian Gov’t and Orthodox Church Push Anti-Sodomy Propaganda Law to Protect Youth" by Mansur Mirovalev, Associated Press 1/28/13

The legislation being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as "propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism." It includes a ban on holding public events that promote gay rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian cities already have similar laws on their books.

Other laws that the Kremlin says are intended to protect young Russians have been hastily adopted in recent months, including some that allow banning and blocking web content and print publications that are deemed "extremist" or unfit for young audiences.

Those behind the bill say minors need to be protected from "homosexual propaganda" because they are unable to evaluate the information critically. "This propaganda goes through the mass media and public events that propagate homosexuality as normal behavior," the bill reads.

Cities started adopting anti-gay laws in 2006. Only one person has been prosecuted so far under a law specifically targeted at gays: Nikolai Alexeyev, a gay rights campaigner, was fined the equivalent of $160 after a one-man protest last summer in St. Petersburg.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Russian Duma gives first nod to nationwide ban on gay propaganda" posted at Russia Today RT-TV 1/25/13

The ban was submitted by deputies from the Novosibirsk Region in Siberia, who had earlier introduced similar local regulations. If approved, it would introduce heavy fines for the promotion of homosexuality among children. Those found guilty of the offence could be fined up to 5000 roubles (about $160), but the fines increase 10-fold for officials and 100-fold for companies.

The LGBT community has begun street protests against the bill in Moscow and in other Russian cities. They turned into violence several times as people who claim to be believers and defenders of traditional values attacked the gay activists.

The violence between gay activists and the people, who claim to be defenders of Orthodox Christianity, broke out again on Friday as MPs readied to hold the hearings into the bill. Over a dozen people from each side started shouting slogans “Moscow is not Sodom” and “Moscow is not Iran”, they then started smearing each other with paint and sprayed tear gas after which the police had to intervene breaking up the protest and detaining about 20 activists.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Russians Face Extinction from Abortion

Russian lawmakers, worried about a falling birth rate, passed a law on Friday that abortion advertisements must carry a health warning.

UPDATE 7/15/11: Russian president signs abortion restrictions into law

UPDATE 7/16/11: Russia fight abortion as China is taking over the Russian Far East

UPDATE 11/11/11: Pro-abortion media present a horrible society where abortion is limited

UPDATE 1/30/13: Russia to Outlaw Homosexual Propaganda, Kissing

-- From "Russia says abortion ads must carry health warning" by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Reuters 7/1/11

Russia has one of the world's highest abortion rates and cutting this could help it stem a demographic disaster that is looming as its population shrinks.

Though the Soviet Union was the first country in the world to legalize abortion on request in 1920, dictator Josef Stalin outlawed it again, from 1936 until he died in 1954, to try to boost the birth rate.

The Communists later encouraged new births with prizes and money, but since they were ousted two decades ago Russia's population has steadily dropped. It shrunk by more than 12 million between 1992 and 2008, to around 143 million.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Russia gets ready to slap warning labels on abortion ads" by Peter J. Smith, LifeSiteNews.com 7/1/11

Viktor Zvagelsky, a Russian parliamentarian, told RIA that Russia’s abortion problem was “depressing,” and that young girls were being deceived to “believe they won’t have any problems interrupting a pregnancy.”

The Duma is considering a number of proposals that would stop Russia’s demographic death spiral, fueled by an abortion rate where 1022 infants are aborted for every 1000 who are born, according to some statistics. The United Nations estimates that the population of Russia, which stood at 143 million in 2008, will contract to 116 million by 2050.

To combat the abortion epidemic, a host of legislation fixes has been proposed, including: banning free abortions at government-run health clinics; requiring prescriptions for the ‘morning-after’ pill; requiring parental consent for teenagers and a husband’s consent for married women, and mandating a one-week waiting period. Other proposals have included increasing the 2,000 ruble ($70) monthly government subsidy offered to pregnant women.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Preventative Measures" by Marina N. Bolotnikova, Harvard Crimson Staff Writer, 7/1/11

Russia has the highest recorded abortion rate in the world . . .

. . . Russia’s small but burgeoning anti-abortion movement, beginning to resemble its counterpart in the United States, is aiming to limit women’s access to abortion and the morning-after pill. According to The New York Times, their proposed legislation would require a woman over six weeks pregnant to see her embryo or fetus on ultrasound, hear its heartbeat, and have counseling.

To read the entire opinion column above, CLICK HERE.

On a Mission from God: Ronald Reagan's America

"I've made a decision to recommit the rest of my life, and the rest of my presidency, to God."

-- From "Ronald Reagan at 100: The President, the Pope and the Medicine of Forgiveness" by Michael Reagan, FoxNews.com 2/6/11

On my father's 100th birthday, I think back to the assassination attempt on his life in March 1981.

[We] were escorted into Dad's [hospital] room. I remember it being dark and hot—the drapes were closed for security reasons. Dad was awake and alert—and he was clearly glad to see us.

It was good to hear him joking—but later he told me seriously, "Michael, I believe God spared me for a purpose. I want you to know that I've made a decision to recommit the rest of my life, and the rest of my presidency, to God."

In June 1982, my father visited Pope John Paul II. As they met in the Papal Library, Dad reminded the Holy Father of a bond they shared: On March 30, 1981, a bullet missed my father's heart by a fraction of an inch. Six weeks later, on May 13, a Turkish gunman shot the Pope multiple times. Both men narrowly survived the attacks—and both men freely forgave their attackers.

My father told the pope that he believed God had called him to help bring down the godless Communist system—and the Holy Father agreed. At that moment, they forged a partnership that ultimately toppled Soviet Communism.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "What Reagan Meant to America" by Bruce Walker, American Thinker 2/1/11

Reagan . . . did not bring religiosity into the White House. Jimmy Carter was more ostentatiously Christian than Reagan, and FDR talked much more about God than the Gipper did. What Reagan brought instead was a sunny cheerfulness about God, a quiet certainty that this land -- which welcomed oppressed sects of Christians, which elected the first Jews to public office in human history, and which found in the flourishing of private charities (hospitals and colleges, for a long time, were all nearly all religious), a verity in the Great Faith, that collection of believing Christians and Jews who have always, when left to their own devices and consciences, enriched life through quiet compassion.

[Reagan] won a global war without bloodshed -- a stunning accomplishment unrivaled in human history. . . . The nightmare of the Baby Boomers, the threat of nuclear war with Comminism, was ended by Ronald Reagan with no Cuban Missile Crisis, no Manhattan Project, and no D-Day.

. . . The young man who as a lifeguard saved so many lives kept doing just that all his life, and that mission -- not glory or power -- gave his life purpose and worth.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Islamic Law in Chechnya OK with "Honor Killings"

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov: "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed."

-- From "Chechen leader imposes strict brand of Islam" The Associated Press 2/28/09

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die.

The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya, in an effort to blunt the appeal of hardline Islamic separatists and shore up his power. In doing so, critics say, he is setting up a dictatorship where Russian laws do not apply.

Some in Russia say Kadyrov's attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state. But the Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will.

Rights activists fear that Kadyrov's approval of honor killings may encourage men to carry them out. Honor killings are considered part of Chechen tradition. No records are kept, but human rights activists estimate dozens of women are killed every year.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Pro-life Light Shining in Post-Soviet Russia

A fledgling antiabortion movement is beginning to stir in Russia. Driven by a growing discussion of abortion as a moral issue and, most of all, by a government worried about demographics; doctors and politicians are quietly struggling to lower what is believed to be one of the world’s highest abortion rates.

-- From "Abortion foes begin to make their case in Russia" by Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 9/20/08

MOSCOW — Physician Marina Chechneva remembers the old-style Russian gynecologists who worked in state hospitals and churned out back-to-back abortions like Soviet factory workers. She remembers the women who "used to use abortion as a kind of vacation, because in the U.S.S.R., they got three days off from work."

Chechneva, head researcher at the Moscow region's Institute of Gynecology and Obstetrics, performs abortions as part of her medical practice. These days, she is writing magazine articles about fetus development in hope of raising public opposition to abortion. After years of handling fetuses, she explains, she has come to feel a responsibility toward them.

The women "should realize that what they're doing is already a murder," she said.

It's an uphill struggle. Doctors say contraceptive use remains unpopular and that many Russian women rely on abortion for birth control.

The government is desperate to persuade citizens to bear more children. Russians are dying faster than they're being born, a trend that has emerged as one of the most serious challenges faced by this sprawling, scantily populated land.

"This is the decision of a lifetime," gynecologist Natalia Smirnova said. "It's very important for me to show them the ultrasound picture of their fetuses. This stops most of them."

"There were cases when I myself called her mother in another town. By appealing to her mother, her partner, the future father, you can often succeed in making her change her decision and preserve her pregnancy," [Smirnova said.]

"You kill not only a child, a living being, but a part of yourself, something that was alive in you," said Irina, a 25-year-old Muscovite who has had three abortions. The young women who were interviewed declined to give their last names. "There's a trauma and a grief you suffer. You murder a child. It was much more difficult than I expected."

"It's like a conveyor belt," she said. "Women sit next to the abortion room in a line, and it happens very quickly."

"The spiritual position," said Natalia Karpovich, a leader of the State Duma committee focused on family, women and children, "should be that this is murder and the woman who does this commits a sin. Still, I want to stress it's a woman's choice."

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Liberals Ask Themselves, "Why Don't Liberals Procreate?"

UPDATE 8/10/14 - The Extinction of Abortion Advocates: They Don't Procreate

From "Making moms: Can we feed the need to breed? -- Canada has a baby deficit. Will paying women to have more kids help?" by Lianne George, posted May 28, 2007 in Macleans

Canada's fertility rate has been in a free fall for decades. In recent years, though, it has hovered at an all-time low of roughly 1.5 children per woman (we need 2.1 if we're going to replace ourselves). Social analysts pin it on some jumble of female education and fiscal autonomy, secularization, birth control, Sex and the City, a heightened desire for personal freedom, and increasing uncertainty about bringing a child into a world plagued by terrorism, global warming and Lindsay Lohan. [Oops, forgot to mention abortion!] In a hyper-individualistic, ultra-commodified culture like ours, motherhood, for better and worse, is less a fact of life than just another lifestyle choice.

All over the developed world, the same pattern is apparent. Russia, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Italy and dozens of other countries are contending with fertility rates well below replacement levels. Forty per cent of female university graduates in Germany are childless. In Japan, where the birth rate has sunk to a record low of 1.26, family planning groups are blaming the Internet, charging that fertile men and women are spending too much time online, and not enough having sex.

In Canada, economists and demographers are already noting dysytopian, Children Of Men-tinged scenarios. Across the country, women on average aren't having their first child until the age of 31. Elementary schools and daycare facilities, without enough kids to fill the nap mats, are closing for business. Ontario's Ministry of Education predicts that, by 2010, total elementary and secondary school enrolment will drop by nearly 100,000 students from 2002 numbers. In New Brunswick, the province's death rate has overtaken its birth rate. And the economic implications of a disappearing population are substantial: analysts are estimating a shortage of 1.2 million workers by 2020. "For every two people about to retire in the coming decades," says Linda Duxbury, a professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, "there will be less than one person to take their place, which will put significant strain on the health care system." Alberta, B.C. and the Maritimes are already feeling the crunch. "Demographers have known for ages this is coming," she says. "An issue like this takes decades to solve and we've really pushed the envelope on starting to deal with it."

In a quest to hold on to older workers, the Canadian government expunged the mandatory retirement age in December. But this move alone will not avert a labour crisis. Who, after all, wants to work a full-time job much past the age of 65? (Currently, only about six per cent of Canadians do so.) . . . Nor will immigration be the solution. At the moment, Statistics Canada reports that Canada's average of 240,000 new Canadian immigrants per year more than compensates for our dismal fertility rate. However, those studying long-range trends say this is nowhere near enough, particularly as global competition for skilled labour becomes more aggressive in the coming decades. "The numbers that we're talking about are phenomenal," says Duxbury. "Half a million to two-thirds of a million per year. I wonder, where are we going to get those immigrants from? Because most of the industrialized world is going through this same set of problems we are."

Faced with this odd conundrum -- a supply-and-demand crisis in which the suppliers (women) theoretically have the capacity to meet demand (for babies) but are opting not to -- economists and demographers are left scratching their heads. By now, just about every country in the developed world has implemented some policy or monetary incentives, ranging from baby bonuses to tax breaks. Still, the numbers fall. Short of establishing a Handmaid's Tale regime, they're wondering, what will it take to make women have babies? (And they're not talking just one.) . . . Exacerbating the financial hit for women is the fact that they, unlike men, lose income when they have a child -- a phenomenon David Ellwood [a professor of political economy and dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University] calls the "motherhood penalty." In a study he co-authored, Ellwood tracked women's income over time, beginning in 1979, and determined that the salaries of university-educated women plateau after childbirth, resulting in a loss of 15 to 20 per cent in income during the subsequent 10 years. Men's wages, on the other hand, don't appear to be affected. "Why are the most educated women postponing children the most?" says Ellwood. "The answer is, it's not because they can't afford child care. They're in a better position to afford it than most people. I think a lot of it is more fundamental than that, which has to do with what having children does to their own economic futures and opportunities."

Disparities at work are no longer a male-female issue. These days, they are most explicitly expressed between the women who have children, and those who don't. Kids are the new glass ceiling. According to U.S. economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, only 74 per cent of "off-ramped" women seeking to rejoin the workforce are able to, and only 40 per cent of those return to full-time, professional jobs. A Cornell University study found that mothers are 44 per cent less likely to be hired than non-mothers with the same resumé, experience and qualifications. "It's no accident that the majority of male senior executives have kids and the majority of female senior executives don't," says Ellen Bravo, a renowned American feminist and author of the newly published Taking on the Big Boys. "It's a requirement for the job."

But it's not only women's lost income that policy wonks are going to have to consider. It's also that, although child-rearing is a multi-pronged job which, if done properly, benefits the family, the nation, and everyone in between, the bulk of the responsibility for undertaking the whole thing still sits squarely on a mother's shoulders. Even as we bemoan our plummeting birth rate, and the grim economic future it may bring, everything about the way we've organized our culture is designed to force women to choose between work and kids -- and to penalize them if they choose kids. [Liberals view it as a penalty, others view it as a blessing!] And so, these days, it's not just a matter of a woman wanting children; it's a matter of wanting them at the expense of everything else she's worked for. . . . In Vienna, researchers at the International Instutite for Applied Systems Analysis have developed a disquieting hypothesis called the "low fertility trap," which suggests that the causes of low fertility are self-perpetuating. They foresee the potential for the baby bust to spiral out of control for three reasons: first, negative population growth means there will be fewer women of child-bearing age in the future to produce more children. Second, young people have been socialized [a.k.a. "brainwashed"] to believe that the ideal family size is a small one, which means fewer couples will have more than one child. Finally, the aging population will place tremendous financial strain on younger cohorts -- who have been raised with higher material aspirations to begin with -- which will translate into fewer children, or none at all.

"In the next 20 years," says Harvard's Ellwood, "there will be no net new native-born workers in the so-called prime age of 24 to 55 in the United States. The only new workers will come from two places: older workers and immigrants. And most immigrants in nations like the U.S. have been low-skill. Canada has had more higher-skill immigrants." The issue is made more difficult by the fact that, among Americans in particular, there is wide-ranging discomfort with a liberal immigration policy right now. "[Immigrants] are in a world where there's concerns about terrorism, and worries about jobs being sent abroad. So it's a real challenge."

Here is where we bump up against the dark underbelly of the demography discussion: the fact that it's not so much about urging women to have babies as it is about urging the right women to have them -- and to preserve Western civilization in the process. As it happens, the group whose fertility rates are declining the fastest are those with the greatest social and financial prospects. That is, Western (well-assimilated, if not white) professionals with university degrees. [Any conservative who would make such statements would be in the unemployment line along with Don Imus.]
. . .
It's this type of economic reasoning, paired with an underlying xenophobic angst, that is spurring pro-fertility policy initiatives in developed nations around the world. In Poland, where the population has fallen by half a million since 2000, the government has begun offering up a modest sum of 1,000 zlotys (roughly $400) for each child a woman produces. In Italy, officials are offering a reward of $1,500 for each second child -- and even toying with the possibility of paying women not to go ahead with abortions.

Amazingly, the evidence suggests that the most successful policies have one thing in common: they don't try to pay women to procreate. Rather, they facilitate the careers of working mothers. They are premised on the idea that, the more value a society places on women's work inside and outside of the home, the more likely she is to want to contribute meaningfully in both spheres. In other words, take some of the load off of her shoulders and spread it around so that children become everybody's responsibility. Who would have thought that the most economically sound solution to a fertility crisis would be rooted in good old-fashioned feminism?

The liberals just don't "get it!" They'll be asking themselves the same question (in the title of this Blog posting) until they're extinct.

Read the rest of this article.

Top Russian Scientist Warns Euthanasia Will Increase Human Organ Trafficking

From "Top Russian Scientist Warns Euthanasia Will Increase Human Organ Trafficking" by Gudrun Schultz, posted 4/19/07 at Lifesite.org

A leading Russian scientist and politician has warned that trafficking in human organs will explode in the country if legal euthanasia is introduced, Regnum News Agency reported earlier today.

Sergey Kolesnikov is a member of the Russian State Duma, a doctor of medicine and a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. He told a Regnum correspondent that a law permitting euthanasia would “sharply increase” the risk of criminal seizure of human organs, already a significant problem in the country.

“I strongly oppose legalization of euthanasia,” Kolesnikov said. “Corruption and crime rates in this country make me take such initiatives very seriously. So, it will become one of legal ways to seize property of an individual, depending on how the procedure is stated by the law.”

“It is no secret that there is a practice of signing contracts with elderly people on using their organs after their death. In this case it would be legal,” he said.

“As a doctor I know that when it becomes impossible to sustain immune activity of the human organism (for instance, in case of brain death), a decision is made to stop resuscitation with consent of the family,” Kolesnikov said. “But this is not euthanasia.

“[Euthanasia] can be called ‘a voluntary decision to take one’s life.’ How voluntary is it here? They would say it is necessary to relieve pain, but today the level of painkilling is almost in 100% enough not to make it a reason to take one’s life.”

“There is another question: who will make the decision and who will carry out the procedure? Doctors should be in no way involved in it. Well, will the family want to be the executioner? Thus, a special position of the executioner is to be introduced in hospitals, but I do not know whether this is legal,” Kolesnikov said.

Proposed by Senator Valentina Petrenko, the euthanasia legislation has been criticized by Russian State Duma deputy chair Vladimir Pekhtin, who said the law would contradict the president’s commitment to improve Russia’s demographic situation. With one of the lowest birthrates in the world, Russia is facing a growing crisis of an aging and dwindling population.