Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, has got some mad smarts. He saw through all the hullabaloo concerning Vladimir Putin’s decision to end American adoptions of Russian children.

Why?

Kengor writes at Catholic Exchange:

The reality is that Russia continues to hemorrhage population. Russia’s population is projected to plummet from 140 million to 104 million by 2050. And what are the chief causal factors? There are several, but the two biggest are abortion and contraception—which occur at astonishingly high levels. Putin has tried to reverse both.

Abortion has wreaked havoc on Russia since the Bolsheviks legalized it a century ago. Soviet communists were way ahead of American liberals. By the 1970s, when abortion was legalized in America, the Soviet Union was already witnessing a staggering 7.2 million abortions per year.

The Cold War ended in the 1990s, but Russia’s runaway rates of abortion—as well as contraception—did not.

In response, Vladimir Putin has implemented the first restrictions on abortion in Russia in almost 50 years, limiting abortions to within 12 weeks. He even initiated a National Fertility Day.

Unfortunately, none of this has really worked.

Poor Putin. Pulling his few hairs out because of the demographic disaster befalling Russia. There is something to be learned here though. Russia, as Kengor points out, has made abortion illegal after 12 weeks. There’s probably ways around it but still. That’s a big move that shows you just how desperate the situation is. But the fact that abortions still continue unabated shows us that you can’t legislate abortion away. You have to convert it away. I’m all for the law recognizing the unborn as individuals with rights but abortion won’t truly stop unless people realize and accept that life is sacred.

Abortion is a symptom of seeing other people as means to an end. Christianity refutes that line of thinking.

This is just a long way of saying that many countries on this planet are in a demographic nose dive and no amount of government action can save us. Only love has the power to do that.

And I for one, don’t really feel the love from Vladimir. You?

*subhead*Planned disaster.*subhead*