MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. Activists from the Pro-Life all-Russia social movement have gathered the one-millionth signature in support of the legal ban on abortion, the movement’s press service told TASS on Monday adding that the signature had been submitted on Mount Elbrus.
"On August 13, a group of abortion ban supporters climbed to an altitude of 5,642 meters above the sea level," Pro-Life movement President Sergei Chesnokov said. "Climbing Mount Everest is very much like implementing our project, so we had decided that the one-millionth signature should be submitted there. Fur us, gathering such a great number of signatures is like climbing a high mountain. Protecting a child’s life before the child is actually born is a moral altitude that our society still needs to climb," he added.
According to the campaign organizers, in the past four years, over 5,000 volunteers have taken part in collecting signatures throughout the country. The project was launched in November 2013. During the first six months, as many as 100,000 signatures were gathered. "In August 2015, we set the goal to gather one million signatures. Now that we have accomplished this goal, the organizers hope that the authorities and society will have to pay attention to the voice of one million people," the movement’s press service stressed.
Chesnokov earlier told TASS that the signatures would be handed over to the country’s authorities. All the technical aspects will be considered at the Eighth International Festival dedicated to the social technologies used for protecting family values. The forum, dubbed Pro-Life, is scheduled to take place in Moscow on August 14-17.
In September 2016, Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch of Moscow and all-Russia Kirill voiced his support for the initiative, signing a petition for the legal ban on abortion. The Patriarch said that the Church considers abortion to be a sin and its position is not going to change.