What About Education? Part 7

Unless you have seen their eyes ...

 In 2002, I was introduced to the children of one orphanage in Ukraine. After touring the facility and experiencing the hopelessness of the situation, my heart was broken. When I was spoken to, I could not reply. This reaction was only because of what I saw. It was not until many years later that I began to understand the hidden secrets of life for these children in the orphanage system.

A bit of history will shine a bright light on what I will share with you in this article and the next. Stepping back in time about thirty years, during the Soviet Union and shortly after its break-up, sex, having children, and abortion, were looked at quite differently than they are today in Ukraine.

In soviet times, sex was taboo outside of marriage. Within a marriage, as children were conceived, they were a welcome addition to the family. In many cases though, if the second child was conceived too soon after the first, abortion was a normal option. There was little, if any, information available for the general population about sex and contraception. (Actually, all information that was available was controlled by the Soviet Government. The Soviet system was anti-family, focusing on work and reproduction of workers.) Little attention was given to planning to have or not to have children. Abortion was considered a normal solution for unwanted pregnancy. It was not uncommon for a woman to have ten or more abortions in her lifetime.

Today, Ukraine is filled with written information, the Internet is available to everyone who can afford it, and sex outside of marriage is looked at with much more freedom. Abortion is no longer the normal solution, but rather contraception and planning are desirable. Even so, abortion remains a solution in some cases.

With this in mind, consider the orphanage system. It is a boarding school for children from difficult homes and children who have no parents. This system is a government facility. In 2002, there was very little attention given to the children in the orphanages. The children were treated as non-citizens, therefore their education about sex and morality was limited, if not completely absent. When children would go home for the summer break, if they had family to go to, a girl might return to the orphanage in September, pregnant. Few, if any options were available. The doctor or nurse would take the child to the hospital for an abortion.

In this short article, you can see the great need of the children, particularly the girls, in the orphanage system to be educated about sex and morality. What About Education? Part 8 will continue the discussion about the real needs of the children to understand sex and morality. Their future depends upon it.