South Korean bishops renew pro-life efforts amid calls for access to abortion, euthanasia

Catholic bishops in South Korea announced in August that they are intensifying their defense of the dignity of life from conception to natural death, fighting against legislative attempts to increase access to abortion and against pro-assisted suicide narratives. 

Bishop Moon Chang-woo, president of the Committee for Family and Life of the Korean Bishops’ Conference, says that the bishops hope to “reawaken the sense of the mission and vocation to protect life from its beginning to its natural end,” according to Vatican News.

Unlike previous pro-life efforts in Korea, this new project aims to bring together the many local and regional pro-life work into a movement that can do everything from assisting pregnant mothers in crisis to advocating in politics.

In 2019, the South Korean Constitutional Court ruled it was unconstitutional for abortion to be a criminal offense. There is now a bill before the South Korean National Assembly that would greatly expand abortion across the nation by amending the Maternal and Child Health Act. A group of Catholic leaders, including Bishop Moon, met Aug. 26 with the National Assembly’s Health Committee to oppose the bill, which would end all protections for the unborn. They warned that the bill would deprive the unborn of the right to life.

Father Leo Oh Seok-jun, secretary general of the Pro-Life Committee of the Archdiocese of Seoul, said that the Church must educate and form the faithful to be able to witness to life. He said that Catholics must be able to defend life clearly and comprehensively, “so that believers and all people of good will do not lose touch with the central value of life, namely the dignity of human life,” according to Vatican News.

South Korean bishops are also concerned about the threat of euthanasia. While physician-assisted suicide is currently illegal in South Korea, 80% of South Koreans are in favor of legalizing it, according to a February survey reported in The Korea Herald.

Bishop Ku Yoo-bi, auxiliary bishop of Seoul and president of the Bioethics Committee, spoke out against euthanasia at an Aug. 18 forum with the National Assembly.

“The increasing demand for euthanasia and assisted suicide today is due to the loss of hope for recovery,” Bishop Ku said, according to Vatican News. “When our society emphasizes only efficiency and productivity, caring for patients is viewed as a wasteful and useless activity, which leads to patients being driven to their deaths.”