In modern society, the practice of performing abortions is quite common. Sometimes such a medical action is due to the need to save the mother's life during childbirth, but more often abortion is the intentional termination of pregnancy.
Committing an abortion as an intentional termination of pregnancy, taking into account the fact that the birth itself could not threaten the health of the mother, is a sin of infanticide from the point of view of the Orthodox Church. In order to understand this position of the Church, it is necessary to grasp the Orthodox concept of the human person itself.
Man is not just a material being. In addition to such a bodily component, each person has something qualitatively special that distinguishes the latter from animals - the soul. Thanks to the presence of the soul, man becomes the crown of creation. In Christian theology, there are several points of view about the origin of human souls, as well as about when exactly this component, inseparable from the personality itself, appears. The dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church does not give a clear answer to the question of how souls originate. Currently, it is assumed that this non-material component appears through the creation of God and the birth of the soul from physiological parents. The conception of the embryo is considered to be the time when the soul appears.
Such an idea of a person and the time of the appearance of the soul determines the realization that an already conceived embryo is the owner of a unique divine gift and, accordingly, a living person, a personality, is already in the mother's womb. That is why termination of pregnancy is considered murder (infanticide).
In 2000, at the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, a document was adopted called "The Foundations of a Social Concept." It examines the most important issues of human life and work. The document focuses on the practice of abortion. Intentional termination of pregnancy is seen as a threat to Russia itself, the future of our state. The deprivation of the life of an unborn child can be regarded as human moral degradation, a lack of understanding of the foundations of the purpose of human life.
Sometimes one hears the opinion that the decision to have an abortion is the mother's freedom of choice. However, this statement is not valid, since in a particular case, a woman has no right to kill.
It is especially worth mentioning the practice of forced abortion, that is, when the birth of a child threatens the life of the mother. On this issue, the Church is in solidarity with medicine - it is necessary, first of all, to save the mother. Therefore, such medical indications are allowed by the Church as an exception. However, it should be understood that even with a forced abortion, a woman in the future should confess it in the sacrament of repentance.
Despite all the severity with which the Orthodox Church denounces abortion (because of such an action, a church marriage may even be dissolved), women who have had an abortion cannot be left without hope of God's forgiveness, because there is no unforgiven sin, except unrepentant sin - so say the holy fathers. If a woman wholeheartedly brings repentance to God for what she has done throughout her life, then there is hope for forgiveness, as well as the fact that such a terrible sin as infanticide is forgiven in confession (subject to sincere repentance and awareness of all the horror of what was done).
Some prayer books have specific prayers for women who have had an abortion. You can read akathists specially written for mothers who have killed their children in their womb.
This is the Orthodox view of abortion. The Church warns a person against a sinful step, reminding that the blood of unborn children, according to the Bible, cries out to God for revenge.
