"Life is a gift... which is fully revealed in giving of self... The gift of life becomes a commandment and the commandment is itself a gift."

       Indeed, "The sun... and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands" (Havelock Ellis). There are those, who are taken aback by obvious and malicious terror to seeable victims, yet remain oblivious or stand for and support the horror of invisible and most innocent victims. Veritably, there can be no authentic compassion for the victims of viewable terror, while at the same time there exists indifference for the terror of preborn victims. Mercy, which does not include the preborn sufferers can never be regarded as unrestricted and genuine; what is left is duplicity, hypocrisy and abominable callousness - all representing tangible signs of the abysmal gravity of one's spiritual decline or deadliness. It needs to be re-emphasized over and over again, that when human beings either fall short in compassion or remain apathetic to suffering of another person (whether preborn or born), and evince lack of responsiveness to relieve their suffering, they bring about an eruptive and damaging separation between themselves and their Creator.

       It is unfortunate, Solzhenitsyn accurately declared, that human beings think about the whole world in accordance with their own "homegrown scales," perceiving as more momentous, more distressing, and more insupportable not those events or situations which in reality are all these things, but rather those conditions and circumstances that are closer to them. Therefore, he continues, "...everything that is far away and does not threaten, today, to surge up to our doorsill, we accept - with all its groans, stifled shouts, destroyed lives, and even its millions of victims - as being on the whole quite bearable and of tolerable dimensions." Accordingly, for a majority of individuals, a flood of preborn victims appears regrettably and shockingly, to be less significant than a negligible happening closer to them or events that directly affect them.

       Science has provided indisputable evidence which is affirmative of what the Fathers of Church had declared, that destroying preborn life means destroying human beings. Dr. Jerome Lejeune (among many others) reaffirmed that a preborn child is "the she/he who belongs to our species... no matter the amount of kilograms and no matter the amount of differentiation of tissue." When there is religious indifference and failure to apply reason properly, there is no escape from steady decline to inhumanity, and what is left is merely human preferableness, and the conceived child depending on human preference is either wanted, regarded as human and therefore born, or it becomes nonhuman since it was unwanted and is then killed. Disregarding revelatory and absolute insights of faith, and rejecting or determinedly suppressing the scientific findings inevitably result in stone-blind ignorance, and in moral downfall - and as such in fiendish misery. The following words of Christ provide unequivocal meaning: "What you do to one of the least of my brethren, you do unto me" (Mt. 25:40) and, "Anyone who is not for me is really against me" (Luke 11:23). Rejection of the preborn children is ineluctably rejection of God.

       In Genesis 1:26, it is written "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" - meaning that each human life which God creates (for "He is the Author of Life" - Acts 3:15) is a gift through which God shares something of Himself, (Sir. 17:3); it also reminds us that in creating human beings, God "endowed them with strength like His own, and made them in His own image." Regarding the creation of every human being Psalm 8:5 affirms this powerful and intelligible truth that God has made each human being a little "less than a god, crown him with glory and honor." The Eternal Creator - God Himself is entirely existent in human parenthood since each begetting is the extension of creation. Thus, "the mother of all living," Eve proclaims vehemently, "I have begotten a man with the help of the Lord" (Gen. 4:1). The essential constituents of the image of God include: discernment between good and evil, free will, the human being's spiritual faculties as the ability to reason, and the dominion over the world. "He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and showed them good and evil" (Sir. 17:7). Human life is therefore a demonstration of God in the world, an indication of His omnipotent appearance and evidence of His eminence. Therefore, in God's caring hands "...is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (Job 12:10) - all created human persons being called to a designated and eternal relationship with their Maker, who is their final and exclusive aim. The sanctity of each human life has its basis in God's inimitable love and His perfect "creative activity" and is sacred and untouchable, precisely because it represents the inviolability of the Creator Himself. Therefore, those who lay violent hands upon born and preborn persons, lay violent hands upon God's own eternally valued possessions (Gen. 9: 5-6). For this reason Genesis reaffirms that, "From man in regard to his fellow men I will demand an account." And, on that account, the Creator of all human life shall pronounce strict judgment against those who deliberately disobeyed the commandment, "You shall not kill." Accordingly, to kill a preborn or born person, in whom the image and likeness of God dwell is "an unspeakable crime." The magnificent gift of life "becomes a commandment... and commandment 'you shall not kill' is itself a gift," since it is dictated by God's unfathomable love - being given in order to achieve genuine serenity and spiritual advance. Thus, the Gospel of God's infinite love for every human being, the Gospel of the dignity of each human person and the Gospel of life "are a single and indivisible Gospel."

       Faith is the unwavering acceptance of God's truths; the reception of the indelible gift of His commandments, presented as the "path of life," as the path in securing the meaningfulness and fullness of life. Adhering firmly and devotedly to this Truth, even at the risk of losing one's life however, (Mk. 6:17-29) becomes infinitely momentous. The Gospel of Life, was not only confirmed through countless miracles performed by Christ, but more importantly, it was brought to fulfillment on the Cross, for through His death, Christ unveils the meaning and pricelessness of each human life. The importance and value of each created human life is so grand that the Son of God has  made it the instrument of redemption of all humankind. Life therefore is given over to human beings for care and protection, since each person will render an account of it to His Creator (Mt. 25:14-30; Lk: 19:12-27). God's affirmative declaration is unambiguous: "It is I who bring both death and life" (Dt. 32:39). Each human person has sublime dignity; it possesses this dignity regardless of his/her personal living circumstances and conditions or stages of life. When societies do the unthinkable and murder defenseless preborn children, they become also capable of killing the aged, the "unusable," unemployable and expendable, "the useless eaters" as Hitler referred to them. In societies where the savage killing of the innocent and unprotected is occurring on a gigantic scale, and most of the citizens refuse to pay attention to it, there is no stopping from destroying those who are of different persuasion, creed and race; the convicted, or the censurable. The victimization of the preborn children which sadly is a wide-spread evil in our societies reveals with distinctness the prevalent decline of the transcendent sense of human life; destruction of the preborn persons providing definite evidence and warning that the human race has already reached the edge of inhumanness. Recorded history reveals that destruction of preborn human life ineluctably leads to the degeneration of the family, and erosional collapsibility of society as a whole. Our genuineness in following divine plan however, would abolish all disputes about abortion, in fact the privilege that we all have of not only changing our circumstances, but more importantly, the choice of changing truly ourselves would eradicate the evil of abortion completely. "He that turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination" (Proverbs 28:5), and "Even worse, and more deserving of condemnation," Saint Augustine declares, "is the pride shown in the search for an excuse, even when the sins are clear as daylight" (City of God).

       After all that is voiced, condemnatory and disdained stance alone will not instigate change. That which is deficient of logic cannot become in accordance with logic in the atmosphere of untruth or suppression of truth, and reasoning in a clear and consistent manner is also impossible when there is deficiency of compassion and forgiveness. It is no other with effecting major changes in violent culture, and changing ideas that are unequivocally false. Instead, attention must be given to relieving the tensions, uncovering the illusions and injustices in our societies, clarifying the perils of moral decline, taking on responsibility for the financial and other interests of the child and the parents, and amending the social and spiritual havoc which led one to ever consider such an unthinkable, unjust and violent alternative. Only by earnest involvement in correcting the deciding factors or the chain of causes resulting in the decision to abort can we be increasingly more effective in preventing abortion. For the sake of the ones who cannot defend themselves, let the emphatically declared words by Saint Francis de Sales, constantly resound in our souls: "The whole world is not worth one soul." Undeniably, the human voice that at the end shall matter the most, will be the voice of the innocent...