Culture Of Death, Russian Style.

From a huge L.A. Times series on "The Vanishing Russians":

". . . Russia is rapidly losing population. Its people are succumbing to one of the world’s fastest-growing AIDS epidemics, resurgent tuberculosis, rampant cardiovascular disease, alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, suicide and the lethal effects of unchecked industrial pollution.

In addition, abortions outpaced births last year by more than 100,000. An estimated 10 million Russians of reproductive age are sterile because of botched abortions or poor health. The public healthcare system is collapsing. And many parents in more prosperous urban areas say they can’t afford homes large enough for the number of children they’d like to have. . . "

Here's the whole thing, and comments and questions from GetReligion's Terry Mattingly.

This puts one in mind of Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart's comments (cited by George Weigel in The Cube and the Cathedral):

" . . . [It seems] fairly obvious that there is some direct, indissoluble bond between the desire for a future and the imagination of eternity...This is why post-Christian Europe seems to lack not only the moral and imaginative resources for sustaining its civilization, but even any good reason for continuing to reproduce."