A convent in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk recently organized a campaign of handing out plastic fetuses to local women in an effort to discourage abortions, according to the independent outlet 7×7.
The initiative was held in shopping centers, libraries, at city festivals, and on university campuses. Volunteers and activists from from the Odigitrievsky Convent claimed afterwards that their efforts had “saved 658 lives,” a local Telegram news channel reported.
In addition to distributing the plastic fetuses, the convent’s volunteers reportedly held one-on-one conversations with women in which they warned them that abortion would be an “irreversible mistake.”
The Odigitrievsky Convent has run other anti-abortion “counseling” campaigns in the past. Additionally, officials in the city of Ryazan have voiced support for similar anti-abortion initiatives involving the distribution of fetus models.
