The Church bases its teaching on God’s revelation in the Sacred Tradition that comes to us from Christ and His Apostles, through the Church Fathers to present. The Orthodox faith maintains the teaching of the early Church without essential change from the past to the present for two thousand years.
The political state bases its laws on human constitutions and laws that change according to various philosophies of life. At one time, in the Roman Empire, abortion was legal and encouraged. After the rise of Christianity, abortion was made illegal, and its practice was limited. In recent years the influence of unbelief in Christianity reasserted itself, and abortion was again legalized. With the development of new medical techniques, the practice of abortion has become a business of tremendous proportions not only in ending the lives of millions of unborn babies, but of selling their body parts to companies for commercial exploitation.
From the beginning days of Christianity, abortion has been seen by the Church as the immoral murdering of an innocent life. In the “Epistle to Barnabas” a Christian writing of about the year 100 A.D., we are taught, “You shall not kill a child by obtaining an abortion. Nor, again, shall you destroy him after he is born.” The writer Athenagoras, writing in 175 A.D. says: “we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder.” The 4th century “Apostolic Constitutions” order, “You shall not slay your child by causing abortion, nor kill the baby that is born. For, ‘everything that is shaped and received a soul from God, if it is slain shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed’ (Ezekiel 21:23, Septuagint O.T.).” St. Basil the Great (330-379) teaches, “The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. The hair-splitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us.” And the Sixth Ecumenical Council, one of the highest canonical authorities in the Orthodox Church orders, “As for women who furnish drugs for the purpose of procuring abortions, and those who take fetus killing poisons, they are made subject to the penalty for murderers.”
Writing to the Christians of Corinth, St. Paul said, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the truths that have been freely given to us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:12-13). As Orthodox Christians we have criteria and standards that are not “of this world.” Abortion is legal in America, but for us who are “taught by the Spirit,” it should not be a course of action.