Vladimir Legoida stated that the basic stance of the Russian Orthodox Church on abortions constitutes a demand to exclude abortions from the system of Compulsory Medical Insurance, according to TASS.
“The fact that the Patriarch signed the public appeal to ban abortions does not mean that the Church has a new position on abortions. The attitude towards abortions of representatives of all the traditional religions in Russia, and not just Orthodox Christians is very well known. It is a strict and unambiguous attitude,” emphasized the chairman of the Synodal department.
He expressed his certainty that “if you ask any priest how he feels about abortions, he will undoubtedly say that his attitude towards them is negative.” “Consequently, when the Patriarch was approached with a request to support this public appeal, he signed it as an expression of his priestly and civic support,” said Vladimir Legoida.
“As for the official position of the Church on the question of interacting with state authorities, here our position remains unchanged. We believe that the first step towards eliminating a phenomenon like abortion should be excluding abortions from the system of Compulsory Medical Insurance. This is our official position,” repeated Vladimir Legoida. In Church we believe that “those who disagree with abortions, and there are many like that, should not pay for this procedure out of their own money.”
“Moreover, the fact that abortions are included in the system of Compulsory Medical Insurance means that abortions are ranked and perceived as a public norm,” stated the Chairman of the Information Department. “For this reason, we consider that at this stage it is important to exclude abortions from the system of Compulsory Medical Insurance.” The people in Church hope that this will be the first step towards us all living together some day in a society where abortions, potentially, would not exist at all.”
Previously Patriarch Kirill signed an open citizens’ appeal to ban abortions. The authors of the appeal, concerted with the Patriarchal Commission on Family Matters, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, advocate to ban abortions calling them “legalized murder of unborn children.” They demand to introduce amendments to the legislation designed to recognize that “a conceived embryo is a human being, whose life, health, and well-being should be protected by law.”
Likewise, the appeal contains a demand to ban surgical and medical-induced methods of terminating a pregnancy, to ban contraceptive methods with abortifacient action, to ban assisted reproductive technologies, “whose essential component is degrading the human dignity and killing children in the initial stages of embryonic development.”
Moreover, the authors of the appeal advocate “providing material assistance from the state budget to pregnant women and families with children, the amount of which should not be below the minimum subsistence level.”
Translated from the Russian
