The John-Henry Westen Show - October 07, 2025


Meet Russia's 'Lila Rose'： Pro-Life Powerhouse in Moscow


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

178.53755

Word count

3,450

Sentence count

234

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Natalia Moskvitinia talks about her experience with abortion in Russia and how she fought for the rights of women to choose their own bodies. She also shares her personal story of how she stood up to the abortion system and won the right to choose her own life.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Abortion itself is slavery, especially for women, because the psychology of accepting evil changes
00:00:06.020 a woman entirely at her core. We are here in Moscow, Russia, and as you know from the last
00:00:14.620 couple of shows, Moscow has moved, particularly in the last five years, toward a much more pro-life
00:00:21.380 country, from 2.5 million abortions a year to 500,000, literally, in just a few years. It's
00:00:28.780 unbelievable, and part of that success, of course, is not only the government taking a serious role
00:00:35.240 looking at demographics, not only the church taking on the role itself, but also activists.
00:00:41.340 Russia has its own version of Lila Rose, and her name is Natalia Moskvitinia, and she's with us today.
00:00:49.160 Natalia, welcome to the show. Thank you. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:00:53.420 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. First of all,
00:00:58.600 it's very beautiful to meet you, and it is great to be here in Moscow and Russia,
00:01:04.060 and I want to learn lots about your work. Well, first of all, I wanted to say to you,
00:01:08.760 welcome to Russia. Here we say, Mother Russia, and rightly so, because we have a very large population.
00:01:15.420 And of course, we would like it to grow even more. And my organization, which is called Women for Life,
00:01:20.820 has already existed for 10 years. In February, it will be 10 years. We're practically on the eve of it.
00:01:26.800 I myself have four children. And so to speak, the reason for creating the organization was my
00:01:31.920 children, because when I was 20, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, but I was sent for an
00:01:36.920 abortion. I come from a family of doctors. My mother is an obstetrician and gynecologist,
00:01:42.320 and my father was also a doctor. He is no longer with us now. He has passed away. But a family of
00:01:46.760 doctors has a special attitude toward all medical issues. So when I was told I needed to terminate the
00:01:52.280 pregnancy, I started to resist. At that time, they told me that my daughter's heart wasn't beating.
00:01:58.240 But now my daughter is 19. She's a student at Moscow State University. And I'm happy that back
00:02:03.680 then I stood up to the system, to the abortion mentality in our country. My second child,
00:02:11.120 I got pregnant again two years later. And with my second child, I was told there was a high risk of
00:02:17.060 having a baby with Down syndrome. And that too, well, you know, was kind of a hint that I shouldn't
00:02:22.100 continue with this pregnancy. But I didn't tell anyone about it and made the decision myself to
00:02:26.980 have this child. The baby was born healthy. And literally five months later, I got pregnant with
00:02:33.000 my third child. And they told me that this wasn't a baby. It was a polyp, a consequence of the second
00:02:38.700 birth. And they suggested I get a cleaning procedure. In our country, abortion is called a cleaning.
00:02:44.960 And, you know, somehow as a woman, I intuitively felt that something wasn't right here.
00:02:50.480 Even though I didn't know I was pregnant, I said that I would come back to the doctor a little later
00:02:55.940 and double check. And when I came back to the same doctor a month later, they confirmed that it wasn't
00:03:01.620 a pregnancy. It was a consequence of childbirth and referred me for a cleaning procedure. And when I
00:03:07.580 went to another doctor, I was told that I was pregnant. And they suggested I have an abortion because
00:03:12.700 it had only been five months since I gave birth. You know, having been referred for an abortion
00:03:18.740 three times before the age of 25, one way or another, I realized that something was wrong and
00:03:24.640 that Russian women need support in their right to motherhood. It's almost like the doctors want to
00:03:30.600 almost like force you to have an abortion outside of your own will. I think this is a kind of abortive
00:03:38.460 mindset that has developed over years of abortion legalization. This has influenced the mentality.
00:03:44.380 I wouldn't single out doctors in particular, fathers of children, older women who are supposed 0.99
00:03:49.760 to become grandmothers, and employers as well. 0.99
00:03:53.040 You've had a very personal story that brings you to promotion of life, defense of life, and really
00:04:00.540 defensive women in a way. You've had some incredible initiatives that have really helped to foster this
00:04:11.620 culture of life inside of Russia. Tell us about your favorite one of those, the one that you most love.
00:04:18.380 All these people live in our country and consider abortion almost a form of freedom. Now I have four
00:04:24.580 children and I decided to help. And for 10 years now, I have been helping other women. Thanks to the
00:04:30.280 foundation, more than 9,000 babies have been saved from abortion. From the very beginning, we simply
00:04:35.640 took each pregnant woman and offered her a psychologist, a doctor for a second opinion, a lawyer, financial 0.82
00:04:41.820 assistance, cribs, strollers. Basically everything you might need when you find out you're pregnant.
00:04:47.580 But we realized that it was like fighting windmills. You endlessly look for these strollers and cribs,
00:04:53.120 search for money so that a woman isn't afraid to be left alone with a baby in her arms. 0.89
00:04:58.160 But ultimately, laws need to be passed, and the medical community needs to be retrained.
00:05:03.240 And we started to focus on that closely.
00:05:05.500 In Russia, for a long, long time, there was this anti-child mentality. We don't want children,
00:05:12.440 and it's bad. But Russia really has resurrected from that. I live in Canada, and I'm in America all the 0.87
00:05:20.280 time. And there's very much an attitude of, you know, if you have a large family, people say,
00:05:26.260 oh, how could you do that? You're so selfish, and you're harming the planet. Here, it's totally
00:05:32.720 different. They love kids. Everybody is about loving children. How did that happen? How did that
00:05:40.220 change from being like we are now, anti-family, anti-child, to the opposite? What happened?
00:05:48.740 This is a deep philosophical and Christian question. Since the legalization of abortions,
00:05:53.380 first in Soviet Russia, and then as this plague began to spread throughout the world, 0.91
00:05:58.240 the mentality of society as a whole has changed. And the great misfortune is that it has especially
00:06:03.880 affected women. A woman began to equate the right to an abortion with the right to freedom itself.
00:06:09.840 In other words, if you can't terminate a pregnancy, it's as if you're in slavery.
00:06:14.160 But what was forgotten is that abortion itself is slavery, especially for women,
00:06:19.120 because the psychology of accepting evil changes a woman entirely at her core. And women have become 0.99
00:06:25.260 embittered. Now, I mean, not just women, but society as a whole, and not only Russian society,
00:06:30.860 but the world at large. We are seeking comfort, seeking pleasure. We are mired in hedonism.
00:06:36.640 We are not Christ-centered. And this is a big problem, because we have forgotten that a child,
00:06:43.380 a family, that is happiness. That is the clearest marker of happiness. Yes, maybe sometimes I won't get
00:06:49.820 enough sleep. Yes, maybe I'll have less money, but what else is there to spend your money on,
00:06:54.260 if not your own children? The best investment in the future is to have children. I really liked
00:06:59.440 the phrase by Charlie Kirk, who said that you should have more children than you think you can
00:07:05.180 afford. That's the normal philosophy of a healthy person. You can't compare money to a child, a career
00:07:11.840 to a child, or any pleasures to a child. You don't get enough sleep, but your child is teething and
00:07:17.500 you're happy. You don't get enough sleep, you have less money, but then he takes his first steps and you
00:07:23.000 shout, look, it's his first step. It seems we've lost our frame of reference, lost our faith. But
00:07:28.960 here in Russia, we are now on the threshold of new discoveries. We are rediscovering that family
00:07:34.680 is the foundation. It's our base. And having many children is not something marginal. Having many
00:07:40.380 children is where a family truly begins. I'm convinced that truly, in an adult sense, having
00:07:45.520 children means three or more kids. For U.S. residents, creating a will has never been easier.
00:07:52.780 Thanks to My Legacy Will, an online platform free of charge, you can now create your own will and
00:07:58.840 choose to include LifeSite News in it. Specify where your funeral will take place, the number of masses to
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00:08:10.320 remembered LifeSite News in your will. Visit mylegacywill.com slash LifeSite News. Thank you
00:08:17.040 for your support, and may God bless you. One of the things you mentioned was about Christ, and
00:08:24.600 one of the things in the United States, in Canada, in much of Europe, the pro-life movement there
00:08:31.600 tried to be pro-life, but keep Christ out of it, keep Christianity out of it. They have things 0.95
00:08:40.120 like gays and lesbians for life, or atheists for life, and here it seems that you went all in on 0.75
00:08:49.180 the faith with pro-life, and that seems to have worked much, much better. In Russia, all the 0.80
00:08:54.380 organizations that advocate for life before birth are Christian organizations, and I think that's
00:08:59.820 simply inseparable. And more and more people are joining the pro-life movement in Russia, but usually
00:09:05.640 it's a one-way path. Even if you accept this philosophy of having all the children in your
00:09:10.560 family, you immediately become part of the church. It's a single chain of events that should happen in
00:09:16.140 the life of any healthy person. One of the truly remarkable things here in Russia is, I just learned,
00:09:25.960 is that they very much encourage large families. And there's a practice that when a mother has her 0.99
00:09:34.200 10th child, that the president, President Putin, will give them a letter and invite the whole family
00:09:41.640 to dinner and call the mother a hero. Tell us about that. This is the Mother Heroine Award. This award
00:09:50.640 existed back in Soviet Russia, and it elevates the mother heroine to a state level. It's not just
00:09:56.220 something local, like your neighbors knowing you have 10 children. This is true heroism, and both the
00:10:02.620 region and the entire Russian Federation should know about it. And one of the new achievements of
00:10:07.960 the parent community is that this award now has different levels. In other words, it's not just
00:10:13.500 the president noticing you if you have 10 children. There are different levels of the award, starting,
00:10:18.840 I believe, from five children. Because our society is gradually moving toward accepting large families.
00:10:25.360 And if a family has five, six, or seven children, that also deserves attention.
00:10:29.480 One of the other beautiful things that I believe you started was a way of the patriarch to reach out
00:10:38.060 to mothers to encourage them. Tell us about that.
00:10:41.000 Well, actually, the loudest voice in defense of the unborn has come from the Russian Orthodox Church,
00:10:46.540 and probably still does. And His Holiness the Patriarch always takes note of these stories,
00:10:51.980 always brings them up in his sermons, and is the most outspoken at government venues,
00:10:56.540 like the Federation Council and the state Duma, speaking, for example, about how maternity leave
00:11:02.060 should cover those very first 12 vulnerable weeks when a woman might lose her child due to stress.
00:11:07.420 He says that attention should already be paid to a pregnant woman at that stage.
00:11:11.240 He speaks about removing abortions from the compulsory health insurance system.
00:11:15.300 He constantly puts forward many initiatives, directing the state's focus precisely there.
00:11:19.880 And here it is important to note that the president listens to this.
00:11:23.940 This is just everyday routine for me and my colleagues.
00:11:27.400 Tell us, if someone comes to you because you've, you know, you've been presented with abortion,
00:11:33.500 but they say to you, look, I'm a mom, I've got already three kids, we don't have enough right now,
00:11:42.500 I don't see future for my children, they're going to be poor.
00:11:46.280 What am I supposed to do? How would you respond?
00:11:50.160 It seems to me that a woman generally faces this during the first 12 weeks with any child.
00:11:55.300 She has this kind of tunnel vision, and society may whisper to her, hinting that there are options.
00:12:01.180 It's very important to stand firm here.
00:12:03.500 It's important to understand what you want yourself.
00:12:06.060 In such situations, I always ask three questions.
00:12:08.920 What happened? Why did it happen? And what should be done about it?
00:12:11.800 As a rule, when a woman answers these three questions, she realizes herself that she wants to have this child. 0.52
00:12:18.020 But she has certain barriers, financial, legal, or psychological.
00:12:22.640 We will provide all the necessary specialists and can pay her a certain amount every month
00:12:27.600 so that she doesn't feel afraid and can cover some basic needs.
00:12:31.460 But the most important thing is that the woman makes this decision herself,
00:12:34.980 because it's impossible to force someone to have this child.
00:12:37.840 It's the woman's decision. As a rule, that's exactly what she wants, to have the child. 1.00
00:12:42.800 But her immediate circle suggests that there might be another way to handle things.
00:12:47.200 You've had the great blessing, as many pro-lifers have all over the world,
00:12:52.400 of being able to see a child whom you helped to save,
00:12:58.120 who probably, without your intervention, wouldn't be alive.
00:13:01.400 Tell us your favorite story about that and give us the photo so that we can look at the one that that happened with.
00:13:10.440 It's very hard to single out just one thing.
00:13:13.040 There are, well, probably dozens of stories that have stuck in my memory.
00:13:17.160 And I still keep in touch with all of these women. 0.99
00:13:20.360 I would probably highlight one of the very first stories back in the Foundation's first year
00:13:25.400 when a woman reached out to us while she was in the hospital.
00:13:28.260 She was expecting a child with developmental abnormalities.
00:13:32.580 There were no fingers. Three fingers were missing.
00:13:35.300 And only these two fingers were present.
00:13:37.260 And the father of the child, the one who conceived the baby,
00:13:40.740 got involved with another woman and asked this new lover to beat up our client
00:13:46.880 so that she would have a miscarriage, so she wouldn't carry the child to term, 1.00
00:13:51.480 and there would be no evidence of their relationship.
00:13:53.820 She ended up in the hospital after being beaten,
00:13:57.300 and she had nowhere to go after being discharged
00:13:59.560 because her mother had abandoned her upon learning that the child would have special needs.
00:14:04.340 The doctors frightened her terribly,
00:14:06.180 saying that the baby might die immediately after birth
00:14:08.800 and that it would be extremely difficult.
00:14:11.140 And she was left completely alone.
00:14:13.400 At first, she lived with one of our volunteers,
00:14:16.060 and this was right at the very beginning of the Foundation.
00:14:19.020 You understand?
00:14:20.040 It was very difficult, and we were searching for help, one person at a time.
00:14:23.200 I was looking through my phone book to find someone to take her in,
00:14:26.800 and in the end, she lived at my house too,
00:14:29.120 and we practically went to give birth together.
00:14:31.460 We went to the maternity hospital with her several times 0.86
00:14:33.740 because she was having false contractions.
00:14:36.640 In the end, she gave birth.
00:14:38.680 Just imagine, for me, this was truly a miracle from God.
00:14:41.400 She gave birth right on the Foundation's first anniversary, February 14, 2017.
00:14:46.460 I crossed myself and thought,
00:14:48.180 thank God we made it through the first year.
00:14:49.820 And right on this day, our dear Noshka gives birth to her first child,
00:14:55.160 Bogdan Denisenko.
00:14:56.320 Now he is already eight years old.
00:14:58.240 That is, he is a year younger than the fund.
00:15:00.480 The fund is nine years old.
00:15:01.980 It will be 10 in February,
00:15:03.680 and he will be nine, and the fund will be 10.
00:15:06.160 Can you imagine?
00:15:07.180 Tell us your final thoughts for us
00:15:09.140 as we are sort of leaving Russia.
00:15:12.760 Tell us any closing thoughts.
00:15:15.280 There are a lot of stories about people saved by the foundation,
00:15:18.620 and they can be completely different from each other.
00:15:21.380 A woman at 17, a young woman,
00:15:23.580 might be thinking about an abortion
00:15:25.040 because her mother is pressuring her.
00:15:27.000 At 42, because it's already considered late.
00:15:30.100 Having a third child wasn't really common
00:15:32.140 in our country for decades.
00:15:34.280 And then there's, in quotes,
00:15:35.780 why bring more poverty into the world?
00:15:37.880 Or maybe you suddenly have a career.
00:15:39.900 Or maybe the child's father suddenly ran away.
00:15:42.240 The most important thing in all this moral choice
00:15:45.240 is that it's hard to stand firm in your decision
00:15:47.860 to have your child.
00:15:49.420 This very one, not the one who will come later,
00:15:51.860 but the one who is already here, already conceived.
00:15:54.540 And we put forward a legislative initiative.
00:15:56.760 We have helped and continue to help each individual woman.
00:16:00.020 But it's very important for society as a whole
00:16:02.260 to get involved in evaluating this phenomenon.
00:16:05.160 What exactly is abortion, and why do we need it?
00:16:08.240 And we became the initiators of a law
00:16:10.360 that protects women from being coerced 0.95
00:16:12.360 into having an abortion.
00:16:13.800 This law was first adopted two years ago
00:16:16.040 in the Republic of Mordovia
00:16:17.480 and is now spreading very successfully
00:16:19.540 across our country.
00:16:21.040 In two years, it has been adopted
00:16:22.460 by 25 regions of the Russian Federation.
00:16:25.640 A third of the country has joined
00:16:26.920 in protecting women from being coerced into abortion.
00:16:29.580 For example, if I am expecting a child,
00:16:32.320 no one around me, neither my employer,
00:16:34.700 nor the father of the child,
00:16:36.180 nor my mother and father,
00:16:37.640 nor my friend, nor my co-worker,
00:16:39.520 has the right to tell me
00:16:40.900 that I must terminate this pregnancy.
00:16:43.320 I have the right to motherhood.
00:16:44.680 For a long time, we thought that
00:16:46.000 the right to motherhood meant the right to an abortion, 1.00
00:16:48.520 but that's not the case.
00:16:49.860 It turned out that it's very difficult
00:16:51.460 to explain to those close to me
00:16:53.120 why I want this child.
00:16:54.620 But why should I have to explain?
00:16:56.320 That's why the regions are joining this law.
00:16:58.620 It's educational.
00:16:59.820 It's not about filling the treasury
00:17:01.200 or about fining someone.
00:17:03.000 And then comes the shame.
00:17:04.120 This person is bad.
00:17:05.700 But first and foremost,
00:17:06.800 so that a woman can calmly make decisions 1.00
00:17:09.020 about her own motherhood.
00:17:11.080 The 25th region is St. Petersburg.
00:17:13.400 It's an important city in our country.
00:17:16.680 They weren't afraid to assert their right
00:17:18.360 to healthy motherhood in society.
00:17:20.960 And I hope that our law will become federal.
00:17:23.620 And very soon, literally in two weeks,
00:17:26.100 we will be holding public hearings.
00:17:28.440 Or, as they're also called, the zero readings.
00:17:31.700 That is, this is what happens
00:17:33.180 before the adoption of a federal law.
00:17:35.280 I really hope that this law, as a new standard,
00:17:38.200 will turn a page in our country
00:17:39.760 where abortion was considered a right to freedom.
00:17:43.120 This is indeed modern Russia, 0.89
00:17:44.660 a nation where every citizen is truly valued
00:17:46.780 from the very moment of their conception.
00:17:48.880 They don't wait for the child to be born
00:17:50.520 to hold them in their arms.
00:17:52.180 If you already exist for your mom and dad,
00:17:54.500 if you have already been conceived,
00:17:56.220 you already have a soul,
00:17:57.640 you are valued, you are protected,
00:17:59.300 and your mother is given special status by the state,
00:18:02.060 she is invulnerable. 0.99
00:18:03.520 She is cared for.
00:18:04.380 Last question for you.
00:18:06.420 Do you have any words of encouragement
00:18:07.880 for mothers and pro-life activists in the West,
00:18:11.640 in America, in Canada, in Europe?
00:18:14.000 Of course there are.
00:18:15.080 But first of all,
00:18:16.100 we actively follow what is happening with you.
00:18:18.840 We find it very interesting,
00:18:20.340 and we regularly exchange experiences.
00:18:22.820 I would wish for you not to give up.
00:18:25.020 There are these words in the Gospel.
00:18:26.860 No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back
00:18:29.400 is fit for the kingdom of heaven.
00:18:30.960 If you have set out on this path,
00:18:33.780 you must not look back,
00:18:35.300 because you will lose your way,
00:18:37.080 and your goal will be wrong.
00:18:38.460 We must move forward encouraging and supporting each other,
00:18:41.700 praying for one another.
00:18:42.980 But of course, the most important thing
00:18:44.640 in any uncertain situation is,
00:18:46.260 have children.
00:18:47.560 Natalia, thank you so much for being with us.
00:18:49.400 Thank you.
00:18:49.780 And God bless all of you from Russia.
00:18:52.880 This is John Henry Weston,
00:18:54.480 and we'll see you next time.
00:18:58.660 Aloha, everyone.
00:18:59.740 This is Jason Jones for Lifeside News.
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