(LifeSiteNews) — It could be considered miraculous that Estonia, one of the three states bordering Russia and facing Finland across the Baltic Sea, even exists. Its turbulent history and the unceasing claims to its territory from east and west until the early twentieth century provided difficult conditions for a distinct language and culture to persevere and grow. And yet it has.
Estonia first won its independence in 1918. It lost its sovereignty in 1940 when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Only in 1991 was independence regained. Now, a nation of 1.3 million, once again trying to navigate its way among its powerful neighbors, and naturally affected by the proximity of war, is facing another crisis. This time, however, it is a demographic crisis caused by acts of self-destruction rather than those of an external enemy.
As with other countries that emerged after the fall of the Iron Curtain, anti-family laws were a legacy of the Soviet era. Now, however, the attacks on life and the family are being enshrined anew within the laws of our independent countries. The Communist program targeting the family has re-emerged from the West. Even the redefinition of marriage in June last year, which may have seemed an exception to this pattern, is in fact the heritage of the Soviet project to destroy the family. That started with the legalization of divorce in 1917, immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power, continued with the legalization of abortion in 1920 and decriminalization of prostitution and homosexual relations in 1922, and moved on to the introduction of sex education in schools in the early 1920s. This program was, of course, adopted in the West through the patient work of cultural Marxists.
Same-sex “marriage” was legalized in Estonia in June 2023. This followed dramatic efforts by its proponents to prevent a referendum as the outcome would have been uncertain. In fact, June 2023 marked the end of a ten-year battle in which attempts to redefine marriage were boldly resisted by citizens’ initiatives and conservative MPs, a struggle unlike anything else in the history of the young country. Just before the summer recess last June, the new government decided to push through a Bill allowing same-sex “marriage” via a confidence vote. Despite being a moral issue, marriage was redefined by a vote to confirm fidelity to the government.
In Estonia, half of all marriages already end in divorce, and the majority of children are born out of wedlock, but the introduction of same-sex “marriage” has moved pro-family advocacy into entirely new territory. Inevitably, sex education promoting the homosexual lifestyle and gender ideology is on course to be enshrined into the established legal order.
Two conservative MPs recently commissioned a poll to see how public opinion changed in the first year after the legalization of same-sex “marriage”. The survey revealed that, if a referendum on the definition of marriage were held today, 51 per cent of respondents would still vote for it to be recognized in law as solely a union between a man and a woman, while only 33 per cent of respondents would support a definition of marriage as “gender neutral.” (8 per cent would choose not to take part in the referendum, and another 8 per cent “cannot say” how they would vote.)
But the tide is turning, and the legal situation is expected to mold public opinion more to its favor sooner rather than later.
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Such an act of raw power, which the legalization of same-sex “marriage” unquestionably was, has had a deeply polarizing effect on the small nation. It has also been accompanied by a great number of economic policies unfavourable to families, especially large families. Together they have, in a relatively short period of time, pushed Estonia further down on a course of self-demolition with very little hope of recovery.
The hard truth is that the birth rate has dropped to a record low while the abortion rate remains stubbornly high.
In 2023, 3398 Estonian children were killed through induced abortion. (There were 3466 and 3356 in 2022 and 2021 respectively.)
Estonian law allows abortion on demand until the twelfth week of pregnancy and until the twenty-second week in certain cases (i.e. danger to the mother’s health, possible disability, or if the mother is under 15 or older than 45). The state funds 50 per cent of the cost of each medical abortion (€17.67 of €35.34) and 70 per cent of each surgical abortion (€107 of €152.84). Effectively, this is the cost of human life in a nation that struggles to survive!
Last year, 10,769 children were born, the lowest figure since demographic data was first collected in 1919. A comparison of the number of last year’s induced abortions to live births shows that nearly 24 per cent of Estonian children were killed before they could be born.
For further context, after regaining independence in 1991, over 330,000 Estonian children have been killed, and since 1956, when abortion on demand was legalized in Estonia (then part of the Soviet Union), more than 1.5 million children have lost their lives through abortion. This is a number greater than our current population.
Abortion is, of course, an issue of morality, not demography. Nevertheless, as our leaders look for solutions to today’s demographic crisis and try desperately to think of (inexpensive) ways to promote childbirth, they are reluctant to consider the obvious: stop funding the killing of children who already exist.
Naturally, the crisis of the family was preceded by the crisis of faith. And perhaps nowhere is this primary crisis seen more poignantly than in a society where five hundred years of Protestantism was blotted out by fifty years of Communism. Estonia is now one of the most secular countries in the world. Over 70 percent of the population reports uncertain religious affiliation or none at all. A society that has lost the sense of God is bound to lose the sense of man as well – that is, the understanding of the sacredness of human life created in God’s image and likeness and the recognition of marriage as ordained for the generation and education of children.
Nevertheless, even in such darkness, the path forward illuminated by the light of Christ remains open through repentance, reparation and conversion to God’s order for man, woman and their children.
READ: Denmark and Norway relax abortion laws as Europe hurtles toward demographic suicide
A version of this piece was originally published in The Academy Review, the magazine of the John Paul II Academy, in July 2024. Edited and republished with permission.
The John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family was set up seven years ago following the “reinvention” of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), originally founded by John Paul II. Dr. Thomas Ward, the current president of the Academy, along with a number of other pro-life members of the PAV, was asked to leave the Academy by the incoming Archbishop Paglia, who has since taken the Academy in a very different direction from that John Paul II intended. In 2017, following these dismissals, the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family was founded to serve the same goals as the original Pontifical Academy for Life for the interdisciplinary study and defense of human life in all its stages. The Academy and its members continue its work today, fully faithful to the authentic magisterium and perennial doctrine of the Catholic Church.
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