South Korean bishop calls for abortion ban after U.S. Supreme Court ruling

by Catholic Information Service

SEOUL, South Korea (CNS) — A South Korean Catholic bishop has criticized the nation’s current coverage underneath which abortion is authorized and known as on the nation’s lawmakers to have interaction in significant dialogue to ban the process after the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned a long-standing ruling that allowed for abortion.

Auxiliary Bishop Linus Lee Seong-hyoof Suwon, South Korea, insisted in an interview with the Catholic Peace and Broadcasting Corp. that the U.S. ruling is a clarion name for the nation to alter its abortion coverage, ucanews.com reported.

“The fetus has by no means violated a girl’s proper to self-determination. Life is innate and is a dignity that nobody can invade via any ideology,” Bishop Lee, chairman of the Committee for Lifetime of the Catholic Bishops’ Convention of Korea, stated.

According to a ruling from the Constitutional Court docket in 2019 that stated a ban on abortions was unlawful, the South Korean authorities in 2021 determined to decriminalize abortion as much as the 14th week of being pregnant.

As well as, abortions are permitted as much as the twenty fourth week of being pregnant in instances of rape and to guard the well being of the mom.

At present, six payments associated to abortion are pending within the South Korean parliament. They embody a invoice looking for full abolition of abortion as against the law and two payments looking for a ban on abortion after six weeks and 10 weeks of being pregnant, respectively.

Bishop Lee stated the Catholic Church strongly opposes abortion regardless of the age of the fetus.

“The church is resolutely against the motion to abolish the abortion regulation in any case, whatever the variety of weeks,” he stated.

The prelate additionally criticized Catholic politicians equivalent to U.S. President Joe Biden who opposed the overturning of the Roe v. Wade choice by the U.S. Supreme Court docket June 24.

Biden has stated that he believes ladies have a basic proper to abortion.

Bishop Lee stated such help of abortion was tantamount to holding “anti-Christian views.”

The prelate additionally slammed South Korean politicians, together with Catholics, for endorsing the Assisted Dignity Justice Act, which might legalize physician-assisted suicide for ending the lives of terminally sick sufferers.

The act brings no dignity to sufferers as a result of “serving to terminally sick sufferers commit suicide isn’t mercy, it’s stopping a soul from being saved,” Bishop Lee stated.

For the reason that 2019 Korean court docket order, the nation has seen an increase in abortion instances. Authorities knowledge revealed there have been an estimated 32,000 abortions in 2020, in comparison with 4,800 in 2017.

South Korea’s Mom and Baby Well being Act 1953 criminalized abortion. Nevertheless, media reviews advised that abortion continued secretly as a result of the regulation was not strictly enforced.

Ladies’s and rights teams termed the ban discriminatory in opposition to ladies and known as it a part of a broader bias in opposition to ladies in society.

The BBC reported {that a} 2019 ballot discovered 58% of South Koreans favored abolishing the ban on abortion.

The South Korean Catholic Church has lengthy campaigned for the safety of life and opposed abortion based mostly on church instructing on the “sacredness of life” that stresses that human life should be protected “from the very second of conception.”