The Church in South Korea has gathered over a million names on a petition to keep the country’s anti-abortion law in place.
As South Korea continues to modernise and with the number of single mothers on the rise, calls to decriminalise abortion have increased from sectors of society.
“The signature-gathering campaign was conducted voluntarily and it served as an opportunity to spread the teachings of the Church,” said Fr Remigius Lee Dong-ik, secretary of the Committee for Bioethics of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea (CBCK).
The CBCK held a special Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul and presented the petition of 1,005,000 signatures. It launched the campaign on December 3.
Desperate
This shows how desperate the Church is to fulfil its mission of protecting all forms of life,” said Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, who presided over the Mass.
He called the speed with which so many signatures were added, “an appeal to society” and said “even a fetus is a reflection of God, a citizen of our society, and a human life that should be respected”.
The CBCK will implement the second phase of its campaign on March 18 to raise awareness of the danger of consenting to a “culture of death” across South Korean society, it said.
