Russia’s Paying Students To Have Babies

Certainly, this must have sounded like a good idea at the time: young women who find themselves pregnant often face tough decisions, so paying them a little bit would help make matters easier. That sounds compassionate, doesn’t it? Perhaps that is not what we might expect from Russia but it’s been happening since the first of the year. The target audience is college-age young women, those most likely to find themselves pregnant and single. But then…

Central Russia’s Oryol region has reportedly become the country’s first to offer financial incentives to schoolgirls who give birth after its governor signed a decree introducing the measure. Oryol is among 40 Russian regions pledging to pay female university students at least 100,000 rubles ($1,200) for having children starting this year. However, it was only this past Thursday that Oryol region Governor Andrei Klychkov expanded the program to include school-age girls.

Klychkov claims that the Labor Ministry instructed all regional governments in Russia to adopt the measure. Whether that is the case or not is difficult to determine. The only way we found out about the situation was through the exiled news outlet 7×7. Klychkov, for his part, is trying to claim the high road, saying, “Our responsibility, given the circumstances, is to provide support — helping them preserve the life of the child and safeguard the mother’s health.”

Russia’s birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in 25 years, while mortality rates continue to rise. The continuing war in Ukraine, which has cost them the lives of roughly 500,000 soldiers over the past three years, isn’t helping any. The need to increase Russia’s birth rate is so severe that President Vladimir Putin has prioritized boosting birth rates, declaring that families with three or more children should be “the norm.”

This situation raises some serious concerns about bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Russia has already outlawed “child-free” lifestyles as an “extremist ideology,” criminalized “coercion” into abortion, and expanded maternity payments to encourage childbirth. This latest move takes that situation disturbingly further.

Schoolgirls, by definition, are minors. They are not legally or emotionally mature enough to make fully informed decisions about pregnancy and parenthood, especially when financial incentives are involved. The offer of money creates a coercive environment, pressuring them into a life-altering decision they may not fully understand or desire. This is a direct violation of their right to bodily autonomy.

Additionally, girls from low-income backgrounds, are highly vulnerable to financial incentives. Offering money to have babies exploits this vulnerability, preying on their economic desperation. This scheme effectively attempts to control the reproductive choices of young girls, turning their bodies into commodities. It denies them the right to decide if, when, and under what circumstances to have children.

It should go without saying that teenage pregnancies carry significantly higher risks of complications for both the mother and the child, including premature birth, low birth weight, pre-eclampsia, and maternal mortality. Schoolgirls’ bodies are not fully developed for childbirth. Teenage pregnancy and parenthood have profound and lasting negative psychological effects on young girls, including depression, anxiety, and social isolation. Russia never has been the most wonderful place to raise a child. This environment could easily make the situation worse.

Given the rate at which MAGA Republicans have been copying Russian philosophies, one has to wonder how long it might be before we see similar practices introduced in the US. The position of VP Fuxacouch is already well known. “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us,” Vance told the gathering in Washington five years ago. He outlined the concern that Social Security depends on younger workers’ contributions and then said, “We want babies not just because they are economically useful. We want more babies because children are good. And we believe children are good because we are not sociopaths.”

The whole ‘not just because they are economically useful’ line should send chills down the spine of every responsible adult on the planet.

Paying schoolgirls to have babies is a morally reprehensible and likely illegal practice that violates fundamental human rights, exploits vulnerable individuals, and has devastating consequences for the girls, their children, and society as a whole. It is a form of reproductive coercion and child exploitation that should be unequivocally condemned. We must be vocal in not allowing this movement to spread.