The episcopate will allocate 6 million Euros ($5.2 million) a year for this purpose, collected from a variety of charitable funds, Cardinal Karl Lehmann announced last week at the end of the bishops´ spring meeting here.
Financial help will be given to women who, after attending an abortion consultation center, decide to go through with the birth.
In response to John Paul II´s request in 1999, the German bishops decided the following year that Catholic institutions should no longer be part of the system of consultation centers, which women are required by law to attend if eventually they want to have an abortion.
Under the current system, the consultation center is obliged to issue a certificate, which allows a woman to obtain an abortion legally. Thus the centers can be considered implicit accomplices in abortion.
