The Icon of Abortion

This Icon is a work of the iconographer Mr. Kostas Vrousgos from Thessaloniki and was painted in Adelaide, South Australia.

"The All-Holy God is the fountain of life. Life belongs to him. His love provides life to all living organisms and especially to man, whom He created in His own image and likeness. We live and exist because of the overflowing love of God. As in this sacred overflowing love of God which is life, every person has a right which cannot be taken away. The Son and Word of God became human, was crucified and was resurrected so that all "may have life and abundantly they may have" (John 10:10). God's gift of life is inviolable and murder is forbidden by the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church (Holy Fathers, Synods and Canons). He who takes away life opposes the work of the Life-giving Lord and joins with the devil, who "was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44).

Human life begins from the moment of conception and fertilisation. The Church believes this, and so does contemporary medicine (Panhellenic Medical Conference 1985). Furthermore the science of embryology, with the assistance of ultrasound and of other admirable technological means which are available, proved that the unborn baby is "certainly a new human being, a new member of human society, inseparable from each and every one of us in any way" (Dr Bernard Nathanson). Therefore, from the moment of conception, the violation of life at whatever stage is murder! As much as the killing of an adult or an adolescent is murder, so much so is the killing of a foetus by abortion at any stage of pregnancy. It is the cowardly murder of an innocent and completely unprotected human being, which has no possibility whatsoever to defend or protect itself.

Despite all these, the various human passions and especially sensuality, hard-heartedness, superficiality and indifference, very often lead to abortion as a "solution" of some "unwanted" or otherwise problematic pregnancy! Nevertheless, this is no solution. It is a manifestation of rage of the above-mentioned fathomless passions, which characterise the souls which are found outside the life of the Church and the fear of God.

This icon depicts, on the right, the tribulation of those who have abortions. You can see all the ladies going to the New Herodias. She is depicted as a queen with snakes for hair. (King Herod was the one who killed all the male babies under 2 years old so that the Infant Jesus would die with them.) You can see the doctor putting his sword through the child, and feeding it to the beast. And you can see the lamentation of the Angel, and of one woman as she loses her child to abortion. To the left, we see the Orthodox (or correct) Family: It has the Mother and Father taking care of the kids, the kids playing, and it shows the Mother carrying her cross because child-rearing was meant to be a struggle. But it was meant to be a struggle that is part of the cross that we pick up daily to follow Christ. It is not something to be rejected but something, if the Lord wills it, that everyone should accept humbly. Above the Orthodox Family are two people: On the right is St. Stylianos, who was a big help for children because he helped set up institutions which resemble the day care centers we have today. The other person, on the left, is the Theotokos, the Holy Virgin Mary, who accepted the pain and awesome responsibility of being the guardian of Christ. Imagine if she had decided, while she was pregnant, to abort Jesus because she couldn’t handle the resonsibility. Where would we have been now?