ukraine" "
264,000 voluntary interruptions of pregnancy in 2004; over 5 million in the last 14 years; almost 900,000 couples sterile due to the woman (in 80% of cases following voluntary abortion). These are the disturbing figures published by Gyena Samborska, president of Ukraine’s National Fund for Charity “For Human Dignity”, which promoted a conference on abortion with the title “Compassion and treatment/assistance” in Kiev in recent weeks. Over 160 participants, from various countries of Europe, the USA, Israel and even Uganda, attended the conference, which also enjoyed the support of international organizations such as “Heartbeat International” and “Life International”. “In six months alone, from January to July 2005 said Samborska in her address to the conference the number of our inhabitants decreased by 230,000. It’s as if a small provincial town had been wiped off the face of the earth! In 1993 the Ukrainian population was 52 million, but that figure has now dropped to 47 million”. “Today she remarked our country belongs to the list of those with the most serious demographic problems and the oldest populations”. This situation is made even more critical by the high number of divorces (“6 marriages out of 10 fail”, said Gyena Samborska), by the high number of Aids cases (1% of the population) and by the growing diffusion of abortion. “In recent times she reported the law permitted the interruption of pregnancy within the first 12 weeks, but in cases where ‘medical and social reasons’ could be shown to exist, abortion was permitted up to the 28th week, i.e. as late as the seventh month. Thanks to the activity of our organization, actively supported by the Council of the Churches, we have succeeded in modifying the law from 1st January of this year”. Now in fact the deadline for abortion is the 22nd week, but, explained the president of the humanitarian organization “we are continuing our campaign, inspired by the objective of protecting human life from the moment of conception”. The problem of abortion, according to Samborska, is exacerbated by the fact that “Ukraine is a world leader in the production of drugs that use cells of aborted foetuses, frozen and conserved at the Kharkiv Institute of Criomedicine and Criobiology”. She denounces a situation in which “it is possible today to meet people who wish to prolong their life to the maximum even at the cost of the life of others. At Kiev she reports – there exists, in the Faculty of Medicine, a cell-therapy clinic that provides treatment on the basis of embryonal cells”. The production of these drugs and the possibility of treatment using them, she warns, ends up by creating almost “an atmosphere of approbation and legality around abortion”. But that’s not all: “in our society – says Samborska a grave problem, about which it is taboo to speak, concerns women having to cope with post-abortion syndrome, for which there are still no suitable drugs”. Yet “it is a form of suffering that not only ruins the life of the woman who is struck by it, leading her to depression and self-isolation, but also that of those who live with her. It’s like a delayed-action bomb that will soon explode” and “involve millions of women”, she concludes.
