Father Alexander Zakharov
People today have learned to express terrible concepts, the cruellest in their very essence, in softened, roundabout phrases, trying in this way not to admit even to themselves their horrifying essence, and to hide it.
Imagine the following medical term: “artificial termination of cardiac activity” — what might this expression mean?
Suppose some bandit has mortally wounded a man — plunged a knife into his heart. Now he sits in the dock and they say to him: “What have you done? You've killed a man!” And he replies: “No, I didn't kill him. I only artificially terminated his cardiac activity.” They say to him: “But he died, didn't he?” And the murderer replies: “Yes, he died. So what? I saw no other way out. If he had lived, he would have got in my way in life.”
This is, after all, the commonest reason today that drives women to abortion: children will get in the way of their life — more burdens, more problems, fewer chances for their own pleasures. Men too often, for the same reason, point their wives or lovers towards the appropriate gynaecological ward, so as not to spoil their calm and carefree life. But what happens? Instead of carefreeness their whole future turns into hell for them: the children already born are disobedient, those who come later are born sick, the parents themselves develop health problems, family troubles begin, the husband leaves the wife or the wife leaves the husband… Does all this really happen by itself?
It is true, though, that some women commit this sin “not knowing what they do.” They think that until a child is born it is not yet a human being in the full sense of the word, but only a part of their body, and anyone may treat his own body as he pleases. Such ladies go off to have an abortion as lightly as if they were going to have a tooth out or a tonsillectomy. But this is a tragic mistake, which sooner or later becomes torment for them, and with the realisation of the crime they have committed, their whole life turns into torture!
At what age, then, does the forming of a human being begin?
In France, under state law, a child's life is protected from 10 weeks after conception; in Sweden from 20 weeks; and in many countries life is legally protected only after birth. According to a proposal by the Nobel prizewinner Dr James Watson, a child's life should be protected from three days after birth… But from what point does the beginning of human life really start to be counted? Whom are we to believe: the French, the Danes, the Swedes, James Watson?..
It is perfectly clear that we should listen not to the opinions of people of doubtful competence, but to two authoritative sources: the voice of the Lord and the conclusions of science. Both God and science confirm the same thing to us: human life begins at conception!
The canons of the Church have always protected the human being while still in the mother's body. St Basil the Great wrote that for the deliberate killing of a conceived foetus a person deserves the same punishment as for murder. There is no talk here, as we see, of the age of the foetus; nor is any importance given to when it was conceived — whether 10 weeks ago, or yesterday, or an hour or a minute ago. All the holy fathers without exception who have expressed their view on this question hold the same position. Besides St Basil the Great, we can name such pillars of Orthodoxy as St Gregory the Theologian, St John Chrysostom, St Ephraim the Syrian and St Maximus the Confessor.
In the view of the Church, a human life neither begins at birth nor ends at death. These two dates bound only one stage of human life. This stage is preceded by existence in the mother's body during the time in the womb, and followed by the life beyond the grave.
Now let us see what scientists hold about the beginning of human life. It is by now an indisputable scientific fact that a human life begins at the very moment when two sex cells, male and female, fuse with one another, as a result of which a single cell is formed. And in this one microscopically small cell the person's whole future life is programmed: his sex, blood group, even the colour of his eyes and hair — all this is in this one cell, and afterwards only its development and unfolding take place… Each such little embryo-cell is already a unique and unrepeatable human being, one whose like has never lived in world history. However many centuries and millennia this history may continue, a second such person will never again be born anywhere!
The child's fastest development and growth takes place during the implantation of the embryo in the wall of the womb.
Scientists have calculated that if the child's growth and development continued throughout the whole pregnancy with the same intensity as in the first 7 weeks, at birth the newborn would weigh 14 tonnes — the weight of two elephants…
At 10–11 weeks (in the middle of the third month of pregnancy) all the organ systems of the human body are fully formed. It is from this point that the child's life is protected by law in France. The laws of other countries, however, allow this already formed human being to be killed. Why? Is it really on the ground that, although formed, it has not yet reached proper development?.. But for full development it needs, after coming into the world, no more and no less than a whole 12–14 years! If killing is allowed “on account of” insufficient development, then let us kill, along with the infants in the mother's body, all children who have not finished growing. Or let us bring a tradition into the criminal code: for killing a three-year-old child, impose a lighter sentence than for, say, ten-year-olds, since he is less developed… Barbaric, isn't it? Then tell me, is it not barbaric that for killing a newborn there is prison, while for killing an unborn child there is a sick note with pay? We feel undisguised revulsion for the mother who, as soon as her child is born, secretly throws it into a rubbish bin — and at the same time we bring a bouquet of flowers to another woman who throws her child into a rubbish bin publicly, in a hospital ward, with the help of doctors. If this is not barbarism, what is?
An American magazine reported on a woman in labour who gave birth to a five-month-old baby. She begged the doctors to save the child. The whole hospital was on its feet. The most experienced doctors laboured to save the life; huge sums were allocated… In the same hospital, on the same day, only in another ward, another woman was ridding herself of her five-month-old baby by abortion. It turns out that in one ward a five-month-old baby is regarded as a human being, while next door the same five-month-old baby is valued merely as a piece of meat. What are we to call this?
Let us remove, cast aside the veil of fine words and look into the very depths of this terrible phenomenon.
Let us see what happens during the “procedure” called “artificial termination of pregnancy.”
There are various methods of this termination. In the early stages of pregnancy they usually resort to so-called “vacuum aspiration”: just as a vacuum cleaner sucks dust from a carpet, so the foetus is sucked out of the mother's womb. A plastic tube with sharpened edges is inserted into the woman's uterus. The child's body is torn apart and sucked out into a special container.
If the pregnancy is later, a loop-shaped cutting knife is inserted into the uterus. With this knife the cavity of the uterus is scraped out; with it too the child is cut into pieces.
After 12 weeks of pregnancy another instrument, resembling forceps, becomes necessary, since the child already has arms and legs, and the bones have begun to calcify. With this instrument the doctor grips the child's arm, leg or other part of the body and tears it off with a sharp twisting movement. This manipulation continues until the whole child has been completely dismembered. The spine has to be broken and the skull crushed so that they can be removed. It is the nurse's duty to gather all these parts together after they have been removed from the uterus, so as to be able to say with certainty that everything has been taken out and nothing remains there. Afterwards these parts are thrown into a waste bin or used as raw material in the cosmetics industry (the editors apologise to the reader for this terrible quotation, but we think that stating things plainly will do more good than softening or embellishing them). Dear women, have you ever thought that when you use certain creams and ointments as salves, in the full sense of the word you are anointing yourselves with the bodies of the children you have killed?
The horror of this is made still worse by the fact that a child not yet come into the world feels pain just as one already born does. It is now universally recognised and scientifically proven that a seven-week foetus turns its head and avoids the cause of pain just as at every other stage of life. At 11 weeks not only the face but every part of the hand and foot becomes sensitive to touch. A thirteen-week foetus reacts to pain at every level of the nervous system.
The American doctor Bernard Nathanson made a film showing an ultrasound image of what happens in a woman's uterus during the abortion of a twelve-week foetus by the “vacuum aspiration” method described above. On the screen you can clearly see how the tiny creature tries to avoid the vacuum tube, to wriggle away. Its movements are quick and full of agitation. Its heart beats strongly and fast. And at the end, when the dismembering of the child's body, caught in the tentacles of the machine of evil, begins, it opens its mouth wide in a silent scream. Hence the film's title — “The Silent Scream.” Bear in mind that there is no anaesthesia for the foetus during an abortion.
Mothers, when you set out to commit the sin of killing your own children, remember: it will hurt them very much, and afterwards, in the life beyond the grave, they will ask you: “Mummy, why did you destroy me so cruelly?” What will you answer then?
The sensation of pain reaches its peak when “saline amniocentesis” is used as the method of abortion. Behind this vague terminology the following is hidden: a needle is inserted through the mother's abdominal wall into the child's amniotic fluid. Through it a concentrated salt solution is injected. The child swallows this solution, breathes it, is soaked in it. The solution burns the child, so that it suffers unbearable pain and writhes in convulsions. If the procedure does not go wrong, the next day the mother gives birth to a dead child. Children aborted in this way are sometimes called “icy babies.” The point is that salt, as you know, has a corrosive property. Under this action of the salt the child's delicate skin comes away, and beneath it appears a loose, red, shiny subcutaneous tissue that looks like glaze — which is where the name comes from.
There is also a kind of abortion called “hysterotomy.” This method is used late in pregnancy and is known as a “Caesarean section” (sometimes, on medical grounds — for example, when the baby is especially heavy or large — delivery is carried out by this method). What happens in this case? The doctor cuts through the mother's abdominal wall, then the uterus, and takes out the living child together with the placenta, and then the child is killed by whatever method the doctor chooses… Some of them kill the child right in the uterus. To do this they cut its umbilical cord and cut off its oxygen, and some five minutes later, when the child has died of suffocation, they take the already dead child out of the uterus.
We have not described above all kinds of abortion, but I think these horrors are enough to judge by.
At one feminist demonstration for the legalisation of abortion, the women chanted: “All laws — hands off our bodies!” They evidently consider that abortion is their personal affair and no one has the right to interfere in it. These women need to understand clearly: “Abortion is not their personal affair.” It would be their personal affair if it concerned only their own person. But it concerns another person too — the person of the child… Imagine that a bandit has attacked you and means to kill you. A policeman runs up to protect you, and the bandit says to him: “Go away! Whether I kill this woman or not is my personal affair. You have no right to interfere in my personal affair.” What would you feel like then? Or perhaps you too, like the bandit, would curse the policeman and urge him not to interfere in the business of protecting your safety? Why is it that when you are being killed you call for help and rely on the supremacy of the state's laws, which protect your life, but when you yourselves are killing, “all laws must be removed” and “no one must be given the right to interfere”?! Your life must be protected, but that of a helpless, tiny creature must not? It is precisely its life that needs protecting!
There are people who think that abortion should nevertheless not be equated with ordinary murder, since the foetus in the mother's body has not yet formed as a “person,” since it is not viable.
Whether this being is a person is, of course, a question of faith, which is decided according to a person's general philosophical and religious convictions. For an atheist and materialist, obviously, it will not be. But the Christian faith answers this question unequivocally: of course it is a person! How can it not be a person, when the little one sitting in its mother's womb already has its own individual and immortal soul?! Yes, Mummy — an immortal soul, which (unlike the body) you have no power either to tear apart or to kill! It will stand at the dread Judgement before the Most High beside your own soul, which is also immortal. “Whoever died in the mother's womb and did not come into this world, him [the Judge] will at once make perfect in stature, when He turns the dead to life [at the general resurrection]… and those who did not see one another here will see one another there, and the mother will know that this is her son, and the child will sense that this is his mother…” (Ephraim the Syrian, “On the Fear of God and on the Last Judgement”). Perhaps only then will the wretched parent grasp the whole horror of the deed committed.
To be continued…
