By Kathleen Gilbert
March 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A graphic documentary touted by its creator as “neither pro-life nor pro-choice” that depicts in intimate detail the disturbing reality of Russia’s abortion culture has been released.
“Killing Girls,” so named because all the women filmed eventually learned they carried baby girls, is a documentary seven years in the making that discusses the history of abortion in Russia and follows the induced abortions of several young Russian girls. Only one girl in the documentary chooses to keep her daughter.
The film is set in the Center for Family Planning and Reproduction in St Petersburg, where babies are delivered on one floor and aborted on the floor above.
According ot the film, in Russia 80% of women have had at least one abortion. Of these, the average woman has aborted between two and ten times throughout her life, and hundreds of thousands of Russian women each year are permanently stripped of their fertility due to their abortions.
Despite the prevalence of late-term abortion as the country’s “birth control” of choice, says the film, the public discussion about abortion is nearly silent.
“Killing Girls has also been my most difficult film to produce, mainly because it was next to impossible to find finance,” said Ireland-born producer and director David Kinsella. “Everybody was telling me that I could not show this or that! … I was being suffocated by all the negative criticism towards our film. So I decided to make a film straight from my heart and soul and forget all the negative reactions.
“At times I felt totally helpless during the filming, the screaming from the hospital are tattooed on my soul, the sound of a baby crying during the abortion,” he said. “I was totally shocked.”
The raw filmmaking spares few details except one: the abortions themselves. Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek asked Kinsella why the film, which took such an unflinching glance at the circumstances of abortion, overlooked the actual deed.
Kinsella said that he had footage of abortions, but left it out of the final version. “I think … I will have a much higher success rate with the normal public by not showing scary images,” he told Stanek. “People, especially women, just would turn off.”
Kinsella said there were already “a number of countries” that have asked to use the film in sex education.
Anna Sirota, script writer and narrator of “Killing Girls,” said she too was shocked “not just because this was so painful and cruel, but also because I could not understand how easy it is to give and to take lives, how mechanical the whole abortion process looks.”
Sirota has given birth to one daughter and had four abortions.
“The project started to become an obsession. Maybe I was trying ‘to excuse’ away my sins… I still have no answers,” she said.
To view the trailer (WARNING: The trailer contains very graphic nudity and is not suitable for young audiences): https://www.killinggirlsmovie.com/trailer/