A nation is punished for the sins of abortion
Recently there has been much talk in society about the positive and negative sides of abortion. To understand the essence of the matter correctly, it is first necessary to determine when a human life begins. The data of modern medicine testify clearly that a human life begins immediately upon conception (that is, as a result of the fusion of the father's and mother's sex cells). It is from this moment that the unique human person begins to exist. The embryo's sex, hair colour, build and the child's other features are laid down at the level of the genes. Numerous studies speak of this. Here is just one example: when the US Senate was discussing the question of abolishing punishment for abortion, the opinion of the leading specialists in medicine and biology was unequivocal: “Life in the embryo begins already at conception.” Many other well-known embryologists of the world affirm the same: “From the point of view of modern biology (genetics and embryology), the life of a human being as a biological individual begins with the fusion of the male and female sex cells and the formation of a single fertilised egg cell containing unrepeatable genetic material.” It follows that abortion is the ending of a human life just after it has begun.
Testimony that a human life begins precisely at conception can be found in Holy Scripture too. Thus the prophet David addresses the Lord: “Thou hast helped me from my mother's womb” (Ps. 138:13). Job, speaking of his own life, begins his account from the night when “it was said, There is a man child conceived” (Job 3:3). Besides this, such feasts of the Church as the Conception of the Mother of God and of John the Baptist testify that a human life begins precisely at conception.
That is why the Church has always opposed abortion. Nor should we forget that the marital relationship was given to people first of all precisely for the sake of procreation. While still in paradise, the Lord gave them the commandment: “Increase and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). “The woman… shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety” (1 Tim. 2:14), writes the apostle Paul.
In the old days many children in a family were always seen as a mercy and blessing from God. Among the ancient Jews childlessness was a disgrace (Luke 1:25). Our forefathers too considered having many children a blessing of God.
It is well known that the Hippocratic Oath, which has always been the basis of medical ethics, contains this promise: “I will not give any woman a means of abortion.” In the 5th century before the Nativity of Christ, Hippocrates thus established the physician's independence from artificial abortion.
Christianity was against abortion from the very beginning. In the book the “Didache” (“The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”) we find this rule: “Do not prepare magic potions, do not kill a child (by abortion), and do not kill one that is born.” The Epistle of Barnabas likewise strictly requires: “Do not kill the child in the womb, nor the newborn.” The well-known 3rd-century Christian writer Tertullian wrote: “To prevent the birth of the fruit is counted among us as equal to murder”; and there is a canon of St Basil the Great: “The deliberate killing of the conceived fruit is punished as murder.”
The view widespread in Christianity that abortion is equal to murder entered secular legislation too. For example, it is known that among the Visigoths in the 7th century expelling a child from the womb was punishable by death. In Russia in 1649 the premature removal of the fruit was punishable by death.
It must be said that under the influence of Christian morals and laws in the 15th to 17th centuries, abortion as a medical operation disappeared from medical practice altogether. The turning point came in 1852, when, at the insistent demand of the Paris Academy of Medicine, abortion came back into practice, though only in cases of an anatomically narrow pelvis in the woman.
A real revolution in abortion legislation took place in Russia after the October Revolution, when the decree of the People's Commissariats of Health and of Justice came into force, fully legalising artificial abortion. Soviet Russia became the first country (not counting France in 1791–1810) in which the woman and the doctor were completely freed from criminal liability.
There are so-called stock slogans used in the propaganda of abortion; like other slogans, they are most often calculated on no one's going into their substance. Concepts are substituted, and in the end what comes out is a half-truth, which, as we know, is more dangerous than an outright lie. Once, when the Chinese philosopher Confucius was asked how the world should be rightly ordered, he replied: “First of all I would make people think well about the meaning of the words they say.” Sadly, this rule is broken at every step.
For example, supporters of abortion often declare that “termination of pregnancy” is necessary to preserve a woman's health and life. As if, for the sake of preserving the nation's health, they consider it morally acceptable to tear out sick infants still in the womb. Meanwhile they count as nothing the fact that it is precisely as a result of frequent abortions that underdeveloped and sick children are born. They shout to the whole world that a mother has the right to choose whether or not to give birth to a child, but say nothing about the child's having an analogous right — the right to life. Some claim that the spread of contraception will prevent abortions, but according to statistics, in the USA, for example, more than half of abortions are carried out as a result of failed contraception.
“Artificial termination of pregnancy” — in connection with this term we recall the words of an eminent hierarch of the Greek Church, Metropolitan Meletios of Nikopolis: “What does ‘artificial termination of heart function’ mean? What happens to a person after that? What is hidden behind the fine phrase ‘artificial termination of brain function’? Dark deeds need a cover, since a person cannot bear their true face, even one who is used to committing them; behind such a phrase — ‘artificial termination of pregnancy’ — something terrible is hidden.”
Here are the three main slogans used in the propaganda of abortion: “Every child should be a wanted child”; “Every woman has the right to do with her own body as she wishes.” And finally: “The embryo is not a human being.”
The phrase “every child should be a wanted child” sounds, at first sight, very humane. Yet this slogan reduces the child to the level of a thing that has the right to exist only on condition that someone wants to possess it.
We must remember too that even a pregnancy planned in advance may become unwanted — for example, because of worsening health or a change in material circumstances. Besides, sociological studies show that many children abandoned and deserted by their parents were in their time considered wanted children.
“Every woman has the right to do with her own body as she wishes” — a child, even one not yet born, is still not the mother's body. The Greek professor Abramidis asserts: “The embryo is not part of the pregnant woman's body, so the woman cannot decide its fate alone, as she would, for example, in the case of an operation for appendicitis or tonsils.” The Greek theologian S. Karakas notes: “This is the body of another human being and the life of another creature, entrusted to her motherly care.” The mother and the child in her womb even have different blood.
There remains the only slogan: “The foetus is not a human being.” Although these words seem logical to many people, it must be said that, as genetics affirms, we are human beings at every stage of development. No scientist will say of a human embryo: this is a fish, or a tree. A shoot that has only just sprung from the wood and a four-hundred-year-old tree are equally an oak. Why is it that when plants are discussed everyone agrees on this, but when it comes to man they at once begin to justify the crime?
The name “embryo” or “foetus” serves the same purpose as the name “adolescent” or “adult.” Scientific terms mean only the stage of development at which this or that human being is. In this connection it would be fitting to recall Bernard Nathanson's film “The Silent Scream,” shot with the help of the latest technology. This film for the first time gave us the chance to see how an abortion takes place. One doctor who had performed up to 100,000 abortions saw the film, which shows in detail how a not-yet-born child reacts to being killed. He was so shaken by what he saw that he decided never to perform an abortion again.
So far we have been speaking of the so-called stock slogans. Now let us dwell on another argument of the supporters of abortion. First of all, they speak of the necessity of abortion on so-called medical grounds. These are cases where pregnancy may cause serious harm to the mother's health. In reality, however, the number of abortions carried out because of an evident threat to the woman's life is not at all large. In the USA, for example, it makes up only 1% of all kinds of abortion. The Church does not justify this argument of the supporters of abortion either, since no one has the right to sacrifice the life of one person to save another.
The only serious reason for abortion can be considered an ectopic pregnancy — in this case the foetus cannot survive. This is the only serious reason for abortion. Sometimes life may put a doctor in such a situation that he has to decide the question on his own responsibility and from his own experience, according to the particular situation; then he must be guided by the principles of Christian morality and mercy.
The question also arises: what should we do if we know in advance that a sick child will be born? Of course, in such a case it is hard to give anyone advice. But it cannot go unremarked that this question finds a sharp echo in the problem of euthanasia. Genocide of the sick, the crushing of useless people, is becoming the norm of our life. But the holy fathers affirm — and today's spiritual fathers join them in this view — that by such measures the number of the sick and disabled does not decrease. We give birth to more deformity and sickness in the world. For fear of physical mutations we multiply spiritual and mental ones.
