‘Support to the end’: Religious sister brings palliative care to unborn babies in Ukraine

 

Rome Newsroom, Mar 10, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

Since 2020, a pandemic and then an active war have caused untold tragedy for Ukrainians, but these circumstances have also allowed the country to confront death and grief in a way it never did before, according to a religious sister who offers palliative care to unborn children and their families.

In Ukraine, “one couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about death before the COVID pandemic,” Sister Giustina Olha Holubets, SSMI, told CNA earlier this month.

The more open a society is about death and loss and grief, she said, the easier it is to know how to respond to a family going through the pain of losing a child in the womb or shortly after birth.

Holubets traveled to Rome to attend a workshop organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life on March 3–4. The scientific academy chose Holubets as the recipient of its 2025 “Guardian of Life” Award.

A Byzantine Catholic and member of the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate, Holubets has degrees in bioethics, psychology, biology, and genetics. In 2017, she founded the nonprofit organization “Perinatal Hospice – Imprint of Life” in Lyiv, Ukraine, which she currently leads.

Starting out

Holubets’ work in perinatal care began by chance in 2013. She was back in Ukraine after studying for a master’s degree in Rome, and while working in a medical genetics clinic, she met a pregnant mother whose unborn child had received a fatal prenatal diagnosis. The woman did not want to abort her baby, but she had nowhere to turn to for support in her decision to carry her child to term.

“It has always touched me,” the sister said, “that the Church says, ‘Do not abort,’ but the woman who keeps that child [with a prenatal diagnosis], in reality, feels alone. It’s not enough to say do not abort, but we must give support to the end.”

Holubets noted that when parents receive a life-limiting diagnosis for their unborn child, “society doesn’t understand, and doctors don’t understand what to do either.”

“So, we started, very slowly, to become closer to mothers in this situation,” she explained.

By 2017, Holubets and her collaborators — largely families who have also experienced loss and want to help others in similar situations — realized the question of palliative care in the perinatal period (before and up to a year post-birth) needed a change of mentality on a societal level.

At the Lord’s prompting, the sister and those serving with her started “to speak up about perinatal grief, because no one wants to speak up about this.” They founded the nonprofit and started to commemorate on Oct. 15 Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, inviting families to light candles in the churches and squares.

Some countries also celebrate preborn life on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, established as the International Day of the Unborn Child by St. John Paul II.

Preparing for death

The hospice association does not have a physical center but can be found “where the baby is during the pregnancy: in the womb of the mother,” the sister said. “So we are close to the mother.”

Some of what the organization does includes phone consultations and being present at medical visits and at births if asked. If a priest cannot arrive in time during an emergency situation, Holubets will baptize the baby at the parents’ request.

After birth, volunteers help the family create positive memories about their child by dressing the baby, taking photos, and making prints of their tiny feet. They also continue to walk with the parents in their grief.

“We have discovered that our mothers are prepared to give birth, but we must also prepare them for the death. This is why, then, we enjoy every moment with that baby. So that when there is the death too, the moms can feel more calm because they have done everything they can for their baby,” Holubets said.

In society today, women receive a lot of pressure to abort children with fatal or life-limiting diagnoses. Holubets said in her experience, this is often due to selfishness on the part of doctors, who are unsure how to accompany families in a difficult journey of perinatal loss and grief. Plainly speaking, an abortion is also not registered as a fetal demise.

But women, the religious sister underlined, deserve to have all of the information with all of the options presented to them so they can make the decision. “Because ultimately, she should also take responsibility for the consequences of either an abortion or birth,” Holubets said.

Neither path is easy, she emphasized: “There is always the memory, there is always death — death after an abortion, death after a birth.”

But what happens next changes everything, she added. For one, an abortion does not erase the memory of the child, but for the mother it can lead to depression, difficulty conceiving again, and conflict in her relationships. Women can feel anger toward their husbands or other family members for allowing them to go through with an abortion, casting blame on others for the decision.

On the other hand, if a woman makes the decision to continue the pregnancy and to care for the child for as long as he or she lives, “here too there is the memory, there is death, but the parents remained parents, not those who kill,” Holubets said.

“Moreover, the parents have given all of their love to that baby who existed for that brief period,” she added. Even if the baby dies, “their maternity and paternity continue until the end of life. If another child enters the family, they can speak to him or her about their older sister or older brother, they can show them the photo, there is the spot to visit at the cemetery.”

Grief is always there, but these things help, Holubets said. “Life always has losses; how can we experience them well?” is the question we must ask ourselves.

“So, if experiencing loss in our life is something normal, given to us by the Lord, we must not just resist it but experience it,” she said. “Sometimes you must also seek counsel, give meaning to [loss], provide resources, change the mentality of the society [to show] that it’s normal, it’s not shameful.”