Attitudes of Medical Students T ttitudes of Medical Students Towards Artificial T tificial Termination of ermination of Pregnancy and Euthanasia in the Context of Christian Ethics

Abstract

Medical students’ attitudes towards issues associated with the beginning and end of human life are analyzed using interdisciplinary approaches and empirical material (statistics, sociological surveys). The purpose of this article is to determine the peculiarities of Christian morality’s influence on the attitudes of contemporary Ukrainian medical students towards the issues of artificial termination of pregnancy and euthanasia. Based on a comparative analysis of the evaluative judgments of three groups of respondents (group 1 — those who consider themselves Christians; group 2 — respondents who are undecided about religious belief; group 3 — those who consider themselves non-believers), a complex relationship between religious identification of respondents and their attitude towards abortion and euthanasia was revealed. The attitudes of medical students who have identified themselves as Christians differ from the more liberal approaches of respondents in the second and third groups and, at the same time, the evaluative judgments of a large part of this group of respondents significantly diverge from Christian approaches towards artificial termination of pregnancy and euthanasia. It is substantiated that the attitudes of medical students towards these issues depend on the influence of religion on their worldview, family upbringing, and duration of study in a medical school. The relationship between the peculiarities of religiousness in contemporary Ukrainian society and a nature of religious identification of medical students is analyzed. Two groups of believers are distinguished: people who are characterized by internal religiousness and believers who are dominated by “external” religiousness, i. e., a significant dependence of the motivation of religious activity on the values and norms of secular culture.