Greek doctor under fire for questioning ethics of abortion

A Greek pediatrician has come under fire for comments indicating that she finds abortion to be a complex ethical issue, while maintaining that she believes abortion to be a woman's 'right.'

Key Takeaways:

• Maria Karystianou, a pediatrician who is forming a new political party in Greece, said abortion is a complex ethical issue.

• In a recent interview, she explained, "My scientific background has placed me in a position to approach the issue with care for the life that has been created, while fully recognizing a woman's right to make her own decision."

• Two government officials, Pavlos Marinakis and Panagiotis Doudonis, criticized the comments, with Marinakis finding it "most shocking" that this statement came from a doctor.

• Abortion is legal for any reason in Greece through 12 weeks and is legal after 12 weeks for certain reasons.

The Details:

Maria Karystianou, a pediatrician who is preparing to form a new political party in Greece, lost her 19-year-old daughter in a 2023 tragic train crash that killed 57 people. It is believed that Karystianou's emerging party will lean more conservative.

Speaking to OPEN TV, Karystianou said, "I know that abortions are legal. I am talking about the ethical issue."

She continued, "My scientific background has placed me in a position to approach the issue with care for the life that has been created, while fully recognizing a woman's right to make her own decision."

She noted that she thinks there needs to be a public consultation for a "more democratic" resolution to the issue of abortion, specifically ensuring access to contraception and fixing gaps in social programs so that women don't feel they must choose between their babies and their career or education.

She also said that when a child’s heart begins to beat is the moment when that child should be considered to have rights. She allegedly claimed the heart starts beating at three months; however, the heart begins beating and pumping blood at three weeks post-fertilization.

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The responses to Karystianou's comments were strong and swift.

Greek Reporter stated:

Government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis called the remarks shocking, particularly because they came from a doctor, and stressed that the issue of abortion has “already been settled.”

PASOK lawmaker Panagiotis Doudonis noted that a woman’s right to decide over her own body was enshrined in law in 1986 and that the matter has long been closed. SYRIZA spokesperson Kostas Zachariadis described Karystianou’s stance as an extreme-right position, emphasizing that bodily self-determination is a core achievement of Western civilization.

Karystianou responded to the criticism saying, "No human right is up for debate, is subject to negotiation, or can be used as a field for political games, as some are attempting to present it."

She added:

"Those attacking me over a complex medical and legal issue—one for which the legislature has already provided—do not truly care about the position of women today, their problems, the support of motherhood, declining birth rates, the demographic crisis, children’s rights, or the family and its survival.

Nor have they considered why a woman or a couple is led to abortion in the first place—let alone issues of bioethics."

Abortion is legal in Greece up to 12 weeks for any reason. After 12 weeks, abortion remains legal to 19 weeks in cases of rape or incest, to 24 weeks in cases of fetal diagnosis such as physical or intellectual impairment, and up until birth when there is a risk to the pregnant woman's life or serious and permanent damage to her physical or mental health.

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Why It Matters:

Karystianou's comments are shocking, but not for the reasons Marinakis offers.

It should not be surprising that a pediatrician would be concerned with the rights of the preborn child; the shocking thing about her comments is that, as a pediatrician, she knows and admits that preborn children are human beings, yet still argues that women have the right to end their lives.

Abortion is touted as a standard medical procedure, yet there are few "medical procedures" that are considered ethically debatable. If abortion were truly of no moral consequence greater than having a tooth pulled — as some abortion proponents have argued — then there would be no concerns regarding the ethics of abortion. But induced abortion is not a standard surgery because its intention is not to heal but to directly kill an innocent human.

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As Karystianou's comments show, whether or not preborn children are human beings is not up for debate; science has proven they are. The debate exists over whether or not it is ethically acceptable to kill them. Karystianou seems torn on that question.

On the one hand, she believes abortion is a right, but on the other hand, she knows that preborn children are human beings. Yet, it is ethically incomprehensible, that one person's right to bodily autonomy would supersede another person's right to not be killed. Extended out across all laws, the right to bodily autonomy would ruin society if it were to go unchecked.

The Bottom Line:

Killing preborn children can never be a core achievement of Western civilization; rather, it is a failure of proper reasoning, as it ignores the rights and dignity of every member of the human species. Killing innocent children to suit the desires of adults is a step back into the past, in which barbaric child sacrifices were commonplace. Modern-day, "medicalized" abortion is merely a new twist on that ancient practice.

As history has shown, people can be shockingly good at targeting certain groups and deeming them non-human in order to justify killing them.