Catholic Bishops Demand that Government Prohibits Abortions

“The Christian community is faced with a great moral responsibility for those who consider abortion to be a way out of difficult situations. We demand that the Ukrainian state should at the legislative level confirm the right to life of unborn but conceived persons by prohibiting abortions,” reads an official address of the Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Conference of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine.

According to the Catholic bishops, the Ukrainian society suffers from the harmful consequences of abortions. According to various statistics, 1 million married couples in Ukraine are infertile of which 868 thousand are infertile due to female barrenness. Eighty percent of cases of female barrenness are caused by abortion.

The document says that human life is “sacred and untouchable as it originates from God and belongs to Him only.” Therefore, the Holy Tradition prohibits abortion regardless of the term of pregnancy. During the whole period of its historic development, the church considered “the destruction of human life by way of abortion to be the sin of deliberate murder of a person,” and those who deliberately have abortions to be hypocrites before God and themselves.

“According to the medical science (particularly results of ultrasound tests and antenatal optical filming), a baby killed in its mother’s womb bears the same suffering as a born person tortured to death. From the viewpoint of medical ethics, an abortion is a distortion and defilement of the high calling of the doctor whose task is to treat and save human life and not to destroy it through direct intervention,” reads the address posted by the Information Department of the UGCC.