A recent story

in the Washington Post highlighted a severe problem in a country with

a lot of problems.

About 13 percent

of married couples in Russia are infertile, and that rate is growing,

according to reports. In most of those cases - 3 out of 4 - it is the

woman who is infertile, and that is routinely caused by complications

after one or more abortions.

Even though

abortions have been decreasing over the past decade, the overall rate

in Russia is still five times as high as in the United States and fourth

highest in the world. For every three children born alive in Russia, five

are aborted.

Why are these

numbers so high? The Post article did not speculate, but common sense

yields a few clues. The regime that dominated that country for most of

the past 100 years did not exactly put a high priority on human life.

Add a dreadful economic situation into the mix, and millions of families

doubtless saw little hope of properly caring for extra children that could

be easily disposed of. Consider the overall quality of medical care -

Russia spends less of its gross domestic product on health than 37 other

European countries -- and it is not hard to see how so many women could

end up with permanent damage to their reproductive systems.

An example

the Post cited was a 30-year-old woman who is now despondent because she

thinks that she and her husband will never have children, although not

for lack of trying. It seems that she had an abortion at 19 years of age,

and her concerns about extensive bleeding after the procedure were downplayed

her fallopian tubes, and although she did conceive with her husband, the

fetus lodged in one of the tubes and was also aborted.

One can only

wonder how many other stories of similar misery can be shared by young

people who are reaping the consequences of several generations of economic,

moral and spiritual bankruptcy. But beyond the individual stories, there

is a national problem that will be extremely difficult to reverse.

Sex education

and use of contraceptives have been on the back burner for most of the

past several decades. Government involvement in those issues has even

decreased in recent years, but not the availability of abortions - free

in the first trimester on demand, and up through the 22nd week of pregnancy

for certain medical or social reasons, such as financial problems or lack

of a husband.

It is no surprise

that the overall birth rate in Russia is in a free fall, but the death

rate is rising quickly at the same time. That means that the sixth most

populous country in the world could lose one-fourth of its population

over the next 50 years - from 143 million to 104 million for the country

that has nearly twice as much land as any other on the planet.

Pat Buchanan,

is his outstanding book "Death of the West," examined how Western

civilization is receding due to countries' inability to maintain appropriate

birth rates to replace its population. As medical advances around the

world are allowing so many of us to live longer, some nations are facing

a rapidly aging population and relatively few younger people in the workforce

to prop up the economy. A possible economic solution is immigration, which

is fine in and of itself, but in mass quantities it can lead to a huge

cultural shift, as evidenced by the influx of Muslims into Europe in recent

years.

How Russia

will develop over the next few decades remains to be seen. But looking

at the recent history of the former Soviet Union, it appears that a totalitarian,

atheistic government is not the best vehicle to take the lead on family

planning issues. Sadly, families who thought they had emerged from Communism's

shadow will be living with its effects for some time to come.

[Monroe Roark's

Web address is www.mroark.com.]