Soon after the Nativity of Christ (on January 11, new calendar) the Church commemorates the martyr-children killed by Herod in Bethlehem. "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more." (Gospel of Matthew 2:18; Book of the Prophet Jeremiah 31:15) The Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled, when Herod "was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under" (Matthew 2:16). Boundless was the crime of King Herod, whose very name has become a household word! The groan of terror filled Bethlehem and its region, all Judea, and the entire world, and has even reached our days from two thousand years past. By the annual commemoration of one of the most inhuman crimes in history, the Holy Church tries to awaken frozen human conscience.

When will we hear the "weeping and wailing and loud lamentation" in our once holy land? When will the mothers of Rus', awakening from their madness, cease to kill their own children and cry out from terror, recognizing their great crime? Every fourth abortion in the world is - ours. "Officially" every year there are killed, not just in some one town like Bethlehem but in all cities and villages of our immense Rodina [native land] not 14,000, but tens of millions of children not guilty of anything - and not by the fanatic Herod are they killed, but by their own mothers! What were the little children guilty of? That they wanted to live? People have many rights. There is even a special "Declaration of Human Rights". And does one have the right to life? When he is an adult, everyone recognizes it, but when he is small and still abides in his mother's womb, they do not; adults make the decision about this. In order to justify themselves, criminals always call a lawyer / advocate. There are millions of advocates of the crimes of Herod among us; the parents who contemplated the killing, and the doctors who performed it, and those who spend immense funds on building the execution-abortuaries, and those who tolerate the crime; while the voice of the defenders of the rights of those killed are barely heard from a few church amvons. In order to lessen murders and robbery of adults, a committee is set up to fight against crime. And when will there be set up to fight against this crime of crimes? Many passionate speeches are heard recently, and all are filled with genuine pain: nature is perishing, people's health is getting worse, the life span is getting shorter, too many lethal weapons are being accumulated, and do forth. But about the main thing - silence! Why is that? From whence is this insensitivity to an obvious evil? On one hand, people wish to live well and long, but on the other hand they take this very life from their own children! There is a tremendous contradiction in the fact that people on the one hand speak about human rights, but on the other hand trample upon (in performing such a terrible crime as abortion) the most elemental right of an innocent and defenseless human being! Horror seizes you when you hear that in the name of the right to life it is necessary to stop the death penalty but legalize abortion. It is terrible that we, on one hand, take pity on criminals (although it is understood that they need compassion) but on the other hand, we are not bothered by the killing of a child, with whom we have no emotional connection yet, who has not been able to be born. We feel loathing for a mother who after the birth of her child throws it into a garbage bin or leaves it at the maternity home, but we carry flowers and smiles of sympathy for another who finishes off her own child in a sterile operating room!

Several years ago there was a debate in America about the legality of abortions. Many authoritative social and governmental figures are decisive opponents of child- killing. Thus, for example, former President Ronald Reagan, speaking of the hypocrisy of society, noted to one doctor who promoted abortion, since he was not convinced that an embryo has independent life: "When, my dear sir, you do not know whether a man is alive or dead, you do not give testimony about his death." And here is yet another utterance from a century past. The famous Italian judge Rafael Ballestreri wrote: "The most accurate proof of the fact that some nation has reached the lowest point of its moral fall will be when abortion is considered customary and absolutely acceptable."

The Holy Church has always considered the destruction of the unborn child as murder. If we believe in the Church, if we believe that Her teaching is the Truth, then we must stand in support of the Church's views on child-killing. Raising our voice in defense of the innocent killed children is the moral duty of each one who considers himself a Christian. Earthly happiness can not be built on human blood! The entire history of mankind demonstrates this, and especially this age.

Newspaper "Moskovskij cerkovnyj vestnik"
(Moscow Church Bulletin) No 3(21).
February 1990.