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Editor’s note: Snopes initially published an overview of this claim on 12 February 2002. Renewed interest in the claim following Russia’s expulsion from the 2018 Olympics drove us to dig deeper. While our rating remains unchanged from 2002, we present new research and renewed skepticism in this updated version of the post. For years, internet users have wrung their hands over abortion doping — the alleged practice of conceiving and terminating a pregnancy for the sole purpose of improving athletic performance — despite little to no evidence that anyone has ever done it. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russians and their satellite states, including East Germany, were notorious for doping-related Olympic controversies—typically the use and abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and steroids. The athletic event was considered a time when adversaries in the Cold War could openly compete for dominance on the world stage. Though global borders and economies have been redrawn in the decades since, the Russians still face allegations of doping in the 2018 Olympics. Rumors that girls as young as 14 and women athletes were intentionally impregnated by coaches or trainers with the intent of terminating those pregnancies for a physical gain have their origins in these Cold War politics, and therefore come with an air of believability that appears to have lent them undue credit. Cold War Rumors Since at least 1956, Western media outlets have leveled accusations against Soviet bloc countries that female Olympic athletes sometimes use a terminated pregnancy to reap hormonal and physiological benefits, according to a 1994 report in UK’s Sunday Times: Media reports leveled similar charges at other communist nations as well, most notably East Germany. A 1988 Los Angeles Times article, reported on from East Berlin, described these rumors as fueled by the Western European press. In 1994, German media provided what they billed as a confirmation of both this practice’s existence and its sponsorship by a governmental organization. In a story that garnered widespread Western coverage, the German television station RTL aired what they presented as an interview with a Soviet gymnast named Olga Kovalenko: In a perplexing twist, however, Kovalenko disputes that she was the person who appeared in that interview, claiming the network interviewed an imposter. She additionally disputes an interview attributed to her in a Russian newspaper where she allegedly confirmed details of abortion doping to a reporter there. With regard to the latter, Kovalenko won a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper in Russian court in 1998, and she threatened a lawsuit against the German television outlet as well, as reported by Agence France Presse on 10 December 1998: Karasyova’s disputed testimony remains the only confirmation of the practice of abortion doping. Despite her legal victory, the interviews attributed to her have been repeated as fact long after Karasyova won her court battle. It’s unclear whether she attempted to make similar claims against the German television show. Karsyova’s alleged 1994 interview carried additional weight when it was first reported because many reporters suggested, during the 1968 Olympics, the only way silver medalist gymnast Vera Caslavska—a Czech with anti-Soviet views and a favorite of Western media—could have lost was if Karasyova had cheated. Caslavska’s coach is actually the source of a quote often presented to support the notion that abortion doping is a real practice. Responding to the 1994 RTL interview, her coach says In any other country it would have been called rape. This quote, while still used as independent proof of the practice, refers the same disputed incident. Pro-Life Talking Point In the internet era, the most heavily cited source in support of the existence of abortion doping can be traced to a February 2002 article published in the now-defunct Canadian independent newspaper The Report. The author, Celeste McGovern, is well-known for pushing medical conspiracies and is occasionally featured on fringe websites like InfoWars. Her sparsely sourced story ran with this shocking headline: This story, written in the run-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics, raised anew the spectre of this supposedly hushed form of performance enhancement, suggesting it has been a common practice. The article’s most significant claims have been cited or referenced in myriad pro-life websites, a legal review, and at least one scientific paper: The first source McGovern cites is the director of an anti-abortion group in Texas who then, in turn, cites an unnamed Finnish sports medicine expert about its widespread use. The expert, based on his favourite way of getting an edge quote, is a doctor named Risto Erkola, who expressed both his disgust at the practice and the claim that it was widespread in a 22 May 1988 article in the British tabloid Sunday Mirror. His quote has been repeated ad infinitum in various sources. Media reports following this tabloid claim were skeptical of it, and it is not clear if Erkola would have had any first-hand knowledge of Soviet doping practices in the first place. Responding to the Mirror’s claims in a report that appeared in numerous papers including a 25 May 1988 article in Australian paper The Age [pg 6, Pregnancy Improves Performance, Says Doctor], Peter Larkins, then an official of the Australian Sports Medicine Association raised both scientific skepticism and an eagerness to believe the rumors in spite of that skepticism: The latter source in McGovern’s Record story, a second-hand report of a Russian athlete about gymnasts as young as 14 being ordered to sleep with their coaches is a nearly word-for-word description of news reports concerning the disputed 1994 interview with a potential imposter. As such it almost certainly refers to the same dubious case. McGovern omits the fact that this later testimony was refuted by its alleged source, and suggests a man quoted in a 1988 Sunday Mirror article with no clear connection to the Soviet Union as an authority of its widespread use. Despite these factual problems, McGovern’s Record report has been, and continues to be, cited as evidence of the practice. Dubious Science The scientific rationale in favor of abortion doping is similarly self-referential, circumstantial, and problematic. In a post promoting McGovern’s 2002 report on abortion doping, anti-abortion website LifeSiteNews.com added their own bit of research, which is repeated verbatim on many other similar sites: However, this so-called textbook is an online, self-published document that contains no references for its claims regarding abortion doping, and largely repeats information contained in the aforementioned press accounts attributed to a potential imposter of Karasyova. Another oft-repeated bit of supporting data has its origins in another Times report — this one from 2003. In a story about cheating in sports, the Times cites a Michigan State University professor as lending credibility to the scientific basis of abortion doping: We reached out to Pivarnik for verification. He told us via email that he does not remember conveying the stats cited to the Times, and that the numbers were nothing new. But the numbers were not targeted toward a discussion about athletic performance enhancement. Pivarnik told us he had no idea which study of his the Times was referring to. No published studies have specifically tested a performance benefit following terminated pregnancies. That does not mean there is nothing to the claim. It is well known, as Pivarnik stated, that a woman’s blood volume increases dramatically to support a fetus. The notion that hormonal changes could lead to benefits, while theoretical, is not completely without biological basis. The basic concept, as reported in New Scientist, is rooted in principles about how pregnancy works: This is just a theory, Pivarnik cautioned in that New Scientist piece. On top of these theories, media reports also frequently conflate elite athletes’ success after giving birth—documented in the case of some elite athletes and a popular topic on the web—to the the theoretical benefits of abortion-doping. The role of giving birth and finding success as an Olympian is disputed. Regardless, giving birth is significantly different than terminating a pregnancy after 3 months. Abortion doping claims, specifically, have their roots in Cold War era rumors, are confirmed only by a single dubious case, are buttressed by speculative science, and are largely amplified in recent years by anti-abortion groups. We cannot, however, conclusively prove or disprove the existence of covert athletic research or practices allegedly performed by countries behind the Iron Curtain. As such, we rank the allegation of widespread use and employment of abortion doping as unproven.
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