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Pope: Abortion is never OK, equates it to ‘hiring a hitman’

Pope Francis says abortion can never be condoned, even when the fetus is gravely sick or malformed, and is urging doctors and priests to support families to carry such pregnancies to term.

Faithful reach out to Pope Francis during an audience with participants of a pilgrimage of the Italian-Albanian diocese of Lungro, in the Pope Paul VI hall, at the Vatican, Saturday, May 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Faithful reach out to Pope Francis during an audience with participants of a pilgrimage of the Italian-Albanian diocese of Lungro, in the Pope Paul VI hall, at the Vatican, Saturday, May 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)Read moreAndrew Medichini / AP
    by Associated Press, The Associated Press
    Published 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis says abortion can never be condoned, even when the fetus is gravely sick or malformed. He is urging doctors and priests to support families to carry such pregnancies to term.

During an audience Saturday with participants of a Vatican-sponsored anti-abortion conference, Francis said opposition to abortion isn't a religious issue but a human one: "Is it licit to throw away a life to resolve a problem? Is it licit to hire a hitman to resolve a problem?"

Francis denounced decisions to abort based on prenatal testing, saying a human being is "never incompatible with life."

Francis has spoken out strongly against abortion, though he has also expressed sympathy for women who have had them and made it easier for them to be forgiven.