Synopsis

In today’s Russia 80% of the women have between 2 and 10 abortions each.


St. Petersburg, Russia
Killing Girls brings us into the world of an abortion clinic that specializes in late term teenage abortions. Here, abortions are sometimes performed even after 6 months of pregnancy. Killing girls is a story made for women with a women’s point of view. Russian writer Anna Sirota shares her own personal story with the audience, comparing the sad experience’s of her own, with Russia's new generation of teenagers.

Killing Girls tells the truth about abortion - this film is neither Pro Life nor Pro Choice. Filmmakers follow the main characters when they enter the clinic and stay with them when they leave. But it is not just a documentary about girls who have had to make a tough decisions and only focusing on the medical procedures. Killing Girls is a story about moral and economic choices in today’s Russian society. It is the story about girls that at one point in their life decided to end a late term pregnancy. It is the story of the doctors who performs these late term abortions. Who are these people and what makes them do what they do?

Killing girls takes the audience through the history of abortion in Russia, through the Stalin time to Perestroika, and ending up today. It is story about choices and decisions, about morals and consequences, about sin and salvation and finally about the eternal battle between life and death. This battle is happening today.

Our Characters

Valentina (15)
15-year-old Valentina didn’t know she was pregnant, until her mother noticed. Then, because of lack of money, they decided to have a late term abortion when Valentina was six and a half months pregnant, at the last moment Valentina changes her mind, and decides to have her baby.

Dr. Irina Serdechnaja (52)
Dr. Irina Serdechnaja is working in the largest hospital for woman in St. Petersburg. Her job is to make abortions. For the last 25 years she made more than 10,000 abortions, many of them late term. Her job is to help women in an extremely difficult situation. However she is trying to convince the woman that it is better to have the baby, but it almost never makes them change their mind.

Nastja (17)
Nastja was raped and too afraid to tell her parents what happened to her. When she finds out that she is pregnant, she decides to hide it from everyone. Only after 22 weeks Nastja decides to have an abortion. Nastja is certain that she has made the right choice.

Sasha (16)
Just as many other girls of her age, Sasha became sexually active at a very young age. Since eleven, she already had twenty encounters, but this is her first abortion. Her boyfriend insisted on her having an abortion.

Background

For the last 15 years the population in Russia has decreased at a catastrophic rate. The mortality rate is almost twice as high as the birth rate. The Russian government is trying to encourage women to have more children, but so far the situation remains unchanged.

In today’s Russia 80% of the women have between 2 and 10 abortions in their life. Contraception such as the use of pills, condoms and abortions are legal in Russia and are for free up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. At the same time Russia has no space for sexual education in school programs. As a result after the end of Soviet era and start of ‘sexual revolution’ abortion became to be ‘younger’. More and more teenage girls are put in the situation, when they are having sex with zero information about contraception and responsibility. Late term abortions became to be one of the popular methods of solving the problems for the girls aged between from 14 to 18.

The Russian public have no idea that late term abortions occur, this topic is hidden and never discussed in the society. For the doctors Abortions are treated as an illness, their job is to treat the illness so the girls can return to their normal lives. For the first time ever our film Killing Girls gives the world an insight to the world of late term abortions for teenagers in Russia.