Worker at Chernobyl Site Gave Birth to Normal Child

A pregnant women who defied orders to evacuate the danger zone surrounding the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 gave birth to an apparently normal girl there last year, a Soviet newspaper revealed Friday.

The trade union daily Trud said Yelena Chervinskaya, then 24, arrived in Chernobyl on the second day after the accident as part of a youth work brigade.

Attracted by the good pay she stayed, working first as a cook and then as the director of a hostel. Then she became pregnant.

Doctors had evacuated other women who became pregnant but, apparently because of Chervinskaya’s heavy build, they did not even notice she was pregnant until she had already given birth.

One year later mother and baby Katya both appeared healthy, although they had since moved out of the 19-mile high-risk zone established around the disaster site, Trud said.

“Doctors scared people there into not having children and saying that, if they did, they would be deformed,” Chervinskaya told Trud. “I simply wanted to have a child and I gave birth.

“Look at my baby, she is talking, walking with her own legs, she has two legs--she is not deformed.”