EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Most of the articles in this issue focus on the problem of reproductive rights and family planning. Over the past years our magazine has repeatedly addressed this theme by reporting on Russia and other countries, on new trends, the development of new technologies, and women’s struggle for the right of choice in deciding their own fates.
In returning again to this subject, we are broadening the discussion. Family planning is not possible without active societal support and government measures, without forming a favorable attitude to the problems of the family within the whole framework of society. Family planning presupposes not only programs to prepare parents for the birth of the child, but also changing social awareness, the moral climate overall, and in the final analysis family planning helps create a culture of pro-active love for children, from birth on through life.
In our era it may seem that talking about love for children, about mutual respect between children and parents is not the main thing, the most important thing. We are convinced that love for a specific person is vitally necessary to each of us. Not just to better understand a child who at times doesn’t behave as we would wish, but in order to preserve our own souls.
We thank the Russian Family Planning Association and the International Institute for Research on the Family (USA) for the materials they shared with us.

Nadezhda Azhgikhina