What is it with this new “Let’s pity the Russian women” trend? Seriously, folks? Is it because of this stupid show about “Russian” immigrants that started airing recently? Or what?
Look what I just stumbled across:
In Russia, women get a pittance by agreeing to the sale of foetal tissue from pregnancies that they can’t afford to continue, to be over marketed to rich western women as injectable beauty treatments.
The person who wrote this would have had a conniption had they known how much Russian women spend on beauty treatments. As for “pregnancies that they can’t afford to continue”, this is complete and total rubbish. The Russian government pays women to have babies because of its racist belief that the white Russians are about to be displaced by “brown hordes.” With free medical care, long maternity leaves, and free daycare, it is a lot more affordable to have a child in Russia than, say, in the US or Canada.
Also, the attitude towards abortion is profoundly different in Russia, so there is no need to sob hysterically over the supposed tragedy of selling foetal tissue.
Come on, folks, just try to stick to talking about the realities you do understand. If there is anybody who needs your pity around the world, you won’t find that person among Russian women. Try to boost your self-esteem in some other way and just leave us the hell alone with your Western Liberal bleeding-heart clap-trap.
Clarissa's Blog 
Injectable Russian foetal tissue oh those crazy Western women they’re all so rich and shallow what lengths won’t they go to to bag themselves a CEO or whatever.
My Google detective skills can’t find anything even close to supporting this claim except a few references to placenta being used in some Chinese beauty products and some stuff about international adoption practices that maybe the blogger got confused about.
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There was this trashy series of mystery novels by a Russian author who invented this whole black market ring of selling foetal tissue for beauty purposes. The ring sold to Russian women and was run by Russian women. And it was all fiction, of course.
Why is it that people so enjoy feeling sorry for cultures whose reality they know nothing about?
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Well if they knew more about the culture then how could it be a faceless mass of unfortunates with bizarre customs to pity in order to prove to themselves that they are wordly humanitarians and so soothe the existential guilt of being by virtue of birth perhaps more comfortable than people who live far away?
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Oh, I love this comment! What a great, great comment! “A faceless mass of unfortunates with bizarre customs ” is precisely how many pseudo-Liberals like to imagine people from other cultures/
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Hi Clarissa,
This was an old article from 2005, that I added to my blog recently and went back looking for the reference. It was based on this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/17/ukraine.russia – London Observer, 17th April 2005), but yes, it would appear that I did get it wrong – it is Russian women who purchase and Ukrainian women who are selling the foetal matter.
I will amend the article – thank you for pointing this out.
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The article you quote is not reliable:
“t is thought that women in the former Soviet republic are being paid £100 a time to persuade them to have abortions and allow their foetuses to be used in treatments.”
– This makes absolutely no sense. Abortion is seen as a contraception method in our countries, so nobody needs to be “persuaded” to abort. Sadly, abortions are routine for many many people both in Russia and Ukraine.
“Most of the foetuses are sold in Russia for up to £5,000 each. ”
-This also makes no sense because within Russia itself there are so many abortions made that anybody is in need of paying for foetal matter.
“Sergei Shorobogatko, a former Kiev policeman who is investigating the trade, said abortion clinics in the poor eastern regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv are selling foetuses”
-This now is just appalling. Kharkov is my city and there is absolutely no reason to suspect that it is in any way poorer than any other Ukrainian city (excluding, of course, the capital).
I am shocked at the complete lack of responsibility journalists demonstrate when they publish this kind of stuff.
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Russian propaganda machine has long used Guardian to sell its ideology. This article is obviously part of Russia’s ideological war against Ukraine.
This is why I suggest that Western journalists don’t write about stuff they know absolutely nothing about.
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Interesting.
I did a bit more digging but the vast majority of sites covering this topic are religious and/or anti-choice. The most “official” I came up with was this report, but again the source is religious and quotes a study done by an anti-choice institution.
Click to access August_2010_E_M.pdf
Which states
“According to a 2007 report by Brian Clowes, the investigative reporter who uncovered this story for Human Life International, the raw materials for producing these liquefied fetal serums for injection were exported from the Ukraine. “Women were paid $200–$300—three months’ salary—to carry their pregnancies to a very late stage and deliver the babies alive in a kind of forced premature birth. …establishments attract rich Russian and Western women for fetal injections to “eliminate cellulite from their buttocks, thighs, and arms.” Treatments cost up to $20,000..
Source: http://www.hli.org/files/sr_june_07.pdf.
See also
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/8/23/155813.shtml
(references Russian treatment clinics, but no indication of source)
There is also this controversy – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Rader – not cosmetic, but medical, but again references Eastern European foetuses being exported, and a brief reference to Yuily Baltaytis who apparently worked in Barbados, which mentioned in the Clowes article.
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Yes, there is a huge anti-choice campaign unleashed by the Russian government and ROC right now. They are capable of much nastier things that this bunch of lies.
” $200–$300″ is NOT a 3 months’ salary in any part of Ukraine. Especially not in Donetsk and Kharkov.
All these sources are lying through their teeth.
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