Πέμπτη 5 Ιανουαρίου 2012

What does an abortion cost? A human life!

For the procedures mentioned in the following article, all related information was drawn from scientific books, from pamphlets of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, from the movie “The Silent Scream”by R. Nathanson, as well as the website: www.UNBORN.GR.

Orthodox Outlet for Dogmatic Enquiries

ΤΟ ΙΔΙΟ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ

Hello there!

Like everyone else, you probably know exactly when you were born. But, did you ever imagine your ‘self’ before it was born? Your mother has never forgotten your first capers inside her body, or your movements later on as a baby, telling her how you wanted to come out, into the light!

Well? What do you think? Did you exist then, or didn’t you? “Of course I existed” you will reply, and you would be absolutely right. You didn’t suddenly come to life at the moment of your birth, but well before that. You started to live – like all of us – nine months before your moment of birth, and to be precise, from the time that your parents came together, when the spermatozoon united with the ovule to become You; albeit initially only one cell (a zygote), you nevertheless had your own, exclusive, inherited characteristics, and an extraordinarily rapid development!

Now check out what you did, before (!) you were born :

Six hours after your conception, your “grasping” onto life, while multiplying yourself incessantly, with your 6 million genes, you traveled speedily through the Fallopian Tubes and were nestled inside your mother’s womb, within the very first week of your life!

By the second week, from the one cell that you began with, you had become 8 thousand cells and had acquired your own blood, and in fact a totally different blood than your mother’s, even though she was the one feeding you.

In your third week, your head was starting to form, and so were your lungs, your stomach, your intestine, your kidneys, your spinal cord, and your liver was already producing your blood.

Your heart started to beat on the 21^st day of your life, and it continues to beat since then, “like clockwork”!

In the first month of your life, despite your miniature size, with your mother barely suspecting your existence, you already had tiny little arms and legs and a tiny little heart that was synchronized with your mother’s heart.

In the fifth week, your head, your chest and your abdomen were clearly discernible. You now had your eyes - complete with retina, lens and eyelids – and you also had your ears and nose.

That is when the formation of the center of speech in your cerebral lobe appeared. From that moment on, your heartbeat became so strong, that it could be read by a cardiogram!

In the sixth week, your fingers were clearly discernible, and so were your toes, and from then on, your brain waves could be recorded on an ECG (encephalogram).

Your brain was completely formed in the seventh week of your gestation, and thanks to this, you could now feel everything and respond to every stimulus. You could even open your lips and swallow. That was when you also acquired your very own fingerprints!

By your eighth week, you had acquired all of your vital organs, even though you were just 3 cm tall.

Between the 9^th and tenth week, all of your organs were functioning perfectly, while your muscles and nerves were synchronizing themselves. You had even started physical exercises: you moved your arms and legs, you sucked your thumb and even leaped about, inside the warm, amniacal fluid!

Even before this stage, you were already a fully recognizable human being.

By the ninth week, you could grasp a small object, you could listen to and remember the beating of our mother’s heart, and you could feel pain, if someone caused it to you.

In your third month, your height was 8 cm., and you weighed 25 grams. Nevertheless, your similarity to your parents was already apparent, also from your third month! You then acquired your hair and nails. You would wake and sleep whenever your mother woke and slept, and your emotional state was susceptible to the external environment. If your mother were calm, you would have become a gentle baby; if she were scared, you would have become a disturbed baby….

This is more or less how you spent your nine months, “floating” inside the amniacal sac, until the happy moment of your birth !

BUT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, IF SOMEONE DIDN’T WANT YOU TO BE BORN?

What if your conception was not “pre-planned”? What if certain people blamed you for an “undesirable” pregnancy? If they considered you a hindrance in the life that they intended to live? (as if they knew what was going to happen the next day!) What if someone told your mother to “get rid of” the baby – that means you – because she is too young or single or because you have Down’s syndrome? What if your mother had thoughts about promoting her career first, and then look after children? What if she didn’t want a second or third child? How would you feel, if others had made plans to evict you from the womb, or designed your extermination, or if someone else generally made decisions about your life?

How would it seem to you, if someone said that “you are not a person” before you are born?

The procedure that follows the above is familiar. It oftentimes has a legal cloak and is referred to as “abortion”, or “extraction”, or other scientific names, or “discontinuance of gestation”, in more diplomatic terminology. There are many methods for the abortive (or executioner’s) procedure. The purpose of each method is to eliminate the embryo and “remove” it from the womb, so that the woman will “cease” to be pregnant.

In a premature stage of pregnancy, there are various methods: During the “Scraping out with suction (D&C or Karman method), a high-powered suction tube is inserted into the womb, and the unborn child is sucked into the tube piece by piece, as it is torn apart into segments, flooding the amniacal sac with blood. The pieces (literally) of the child are all discarded, thrown randomly into a receptacle, exactly like the garbage that is sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

With the “Mifepristone” and “Methotrexate” methods, the corresponding chemical formula is injected, which either destroys the placenta and the child is forced into dying of starvation, or, it is injected directly into the embryo’s heart, in which case, the baby dies instantly.

A miscarriage can be induced, by prescribing certain pills for the pregnant mother and then introducing the drug Prostaglandin a few days later. By then, the child will have died of starvation, with excruciating pains.

In an advanced stage of pregnancy, the “Prostaglandin” and “Injection with Digoxin” methods are similar to the aforementioned ones. During an “Abortion with salt”, a saline solution is poured (using a needle) into the amniacal fluid that surrounds the child, which will burn its lungs and skin. In 24 hours, the child is “born”, charred…..

During the “Hysterotomy” method, a caesarian section is performed, except that the baby in this procedure is extracted prematurely, and is simply left to die.

With a “D&X (partial-birth abortion)”, the embryo is pulled out abruptly by its legs, and, because of the confined space, the baby’s head is left behind, inside the woman, as its neck inevitably snaps during the abrupt extraction of the body. Then, with a special tube, the baby’s cranium is emptied of its brain in order to minimize the size so that it can also be extracted. This baby is “born”, decapitated…

The most frequent method is by “scraping out” the embryo, or, embryotomy (D&E), which takes only 20 minutes.

The “doctor” extends the vaginal passage with a special instrument, and he places certain delicate instruments, like rods, with which he expands the opening of the mouth of the uterus, in order to insert the terminal tube of the “suction device”.

In other words, a “vacuum cleaner” is pushed into the uterus, so that it can “rid” it of its “trash” – the “unwanted” child!

With the tube, he pierces the amniacal sac and sucks out all the amniacal fluid in which the embryo is suspended. (The surrounding vital fluid is called “amniacal” (Greek “amnos” = lamb), because the embryo is a tiny being, as innocent as a lamb!) After the suction tube has invaded and destroyed the –until recently– safe home of the embryo, it then immediately turns against the embryo itself.

From the moment that the “mother” enters the operating room, the embryo is fully aware of everything and is restless. As soon as the suction tube reaches the womb, and before even touching the embryo, the baby backs away, trying to hide somehow, moving in an agitated way, while its pulse reaches 190 per minute (only a 100-meter sprinter has such a heart rate). The embryo doesn’t recognize the intruder, nor does it actually know what is about to happen; but: it does perceive the imminent threat against its life. Thus, motivated by the instinct of survival, it struggles to avoid the lethal instrument. The so-called “doctor” then targets the child with the suction tube, which he can easily locate, by observing the ultrasound’s screen near him. The suction tube then proceeds to chop and absorb the baby’s body, piece by piece. First the lower limbs. The child moves back and forth to avoid it. Then the upper limbs. Then the rest of the body is detached from the baby’s head; it has been sucked up by the tube, and discarded through that tube, into a waste receptacle.

As the child is being dismembered, or while there is something left of its body, it opens wide its mouth, uttering a silent scream: its last act of resistance… Unfortunately, no-one can hear it: not the “doctor” (by euphemism), nor the “mother” (by euphemism). As if all of the above isn’t enough, the baby’s head is too large to pass through the suction tube, so, the “doctor” then resorts to a forceps like a nutcracker (yes, “skull-cracker” is the instrument’s “scientific” name!), with which he grabs the baby’s head and crushes it into pieces, so that they can easily pass through the tube and be sucked out also. The anesthesiologist then asks the obstetrician in coded language (so that he will not be perceived), “whether No.1 is out” - meaning if the baby’s head has been eliminated – so that he too will know that the “operation” is finished….

Now, inside that womb - that container of life - only a few traces of tissue remain, to testify that in there, was a living, tiny and defenseless human being…

MATERNITY IS THE PERSONAL TRIUMPH OF EVERY WOMAN, WHILE ABORTION IS HER DEMERIT AND DEBASEMENT.

The same woman, who agrees to abortion, is often at risk of infection, of a rupturing of the mouth of the uterus, of pelvic inflammation, burns, perforation of the uterus, even death; at the same time she is risking the possibility of being rendered barren, or becoming prone to ectopic pregnancies or problematic labour at subsequent births. In the emotional sector, she often suffers from meta-traumatic anxiety disorders, melancholy, behavioral problems, and she may also be tortured by feelings of guilt, or may encounter various problems in her sexual life and develop eating disorders (bulimia or nervous anorexia). Remarkably, 58% of women who have undergone an abortion have reported that they felt an intense “pain” during the “operation” and that the pain had the emotional and physical sensation of rape. Quite often, an abortion is emotionally disastrous.

The basic cause of a low birth rate in our country is the widespread resorting to abortions amongst its women.

Perhaps it is the true proportions of abortion as well as its epidemic proportions, especially in younger age groups, that should be examined by us, with regard to our relations with the opposite sex, with the responsibilities that our stance often includes, and not only.

How much is a human life worth, for each of us? Less than we think, perhaps? Is it truly worth “sacrificing” (in whichever way) an existing human life, in order to avoid any confrontation of ensuing “difficulties”, or so that our “lifestyles” don’t overstep their usual boundaries?

What excuse do we give the child (or the children, in case of a multiple gestation), whose life we are about to take?

Children are the choicest fruits of each one of us. How can we allow the abortion scalpel cut the thread of its life? Not only are they forced to die an excruciating death –without having done anything wrong – they are made to pay for our personal mistakes with their lives.

No woman has ever looked at “how” her child was mutilated after the abortion. Most women however, have looked at the smiling face of the obstetrician, who reassured them that “everything went well”.

Our personality and our choices are influenced by the contemporary way of life; a lifestyle that undoubtedly brings about the alienation of man from his fellow-man, that traumatizes our senses and creates a social and a personal ruthlessness that is light years away from a child’s innocence, that implants in mankind a selfishness and causes a spiritual estrangement. Quite often, we are like “feathers in the wind” of society: that society which approves abortions; which advertises sex, along with all of its “products” and confuses it with love; which rarely is compassionate; which prefers the unnatural to the natural and acts “opposite to nature” or turns against nature. That same society repulses the person who thinks individually, and prefers the man who thinks en masse, who projects material values and tempts us with impossible dreams of material pleasures, who inflates our ego and of course confronts the minorities that resist its flow. In the numerous difficult circumstances of our life, the slogan is: “Quit trying. You can’t do anything. Take the easy way out (like an abortion)”.

Are we really humane, or are we suffering from our egotism, from a lack of compassion, from spiritual desolation? Do we have love? Love is the first thing that we find has been mutated in society. As such, society is virtually opposed to love, just as it is frequently opposed to life and is supportive of abortions.

How much do we really value the life of a person (of our own child), when it is in direct conflict with the preferences, the priorities, the phobias, the will or the lifestyle that we choose?

WHAT REASON COULD JUSTIFY AN ABORTION?

WHAT YOUTH, WHAT UNMARRIED MOTHER, WHAT CAREER, WHAT SOCIAL PREJUDICE OR CONVENTIONALITY CAN JUSTIFY RESORTING TO SUCH VIOLENCE?

How difficult must circumstances be, in order to justify such an abhorrent and premeditated act of murder, as an abortion? The young age of the parents? The abandonment of the pregnant woman by the father of the child? The concern about “what people might say”? A blossoming period in our careers, which we believe a little child (!) will set back? The thought that the new child will weigh down our budget, or the supposed negative repercussions on the educational prospects of the other (usually two) of our children? Does any of the above really justify cold-blooded murder? Can a human life be deemed of lesser value than these?

Are we perhaps tight-hearted? Could it be, that we ourselves are mentally deficient, when – with our “logic” and our “maturity” – we choose to go to the obstetrician, so that his hands might “do the dirty work” on the embryo? And of course, like every hand that “does dirty work”, these hands are also paid with certain “pieces of silver”.

In reality, with abortion we resort to the power of compulsion with the imposition of our personal will on another person, who is helpless before us. Here, one’s will is “I don’t want your life” and violence (abortion) simply makes this will a reality…..

What mother, who had chosen to “keep” her child instead of “aborting” it, has regretted it? What kind of mother doesn’t rejoice at the sight of her child, and what kind doesn’t abhor the thought that her child could have not remained alive? Why would she pay to have her child shredded, burnt or mashed? Isn’t that paranoid? Isn’t it ironic, that some families cannot have children, while others choose to abort theirs?

How can we mourn for the lives that are lost on highways or because of natural disasters, when we ourselves condemn to death –and a torturous one at that– so many thousands of people every year?

How can we be fighting to save other people from sicknesses, when we kill others before they can even see the light of day?

How can we outspokenly condemn the nazi and racist methods, when we ourselves are more than willing to implement them, especially on those whom we decide will be born sick or with a mental disability “without our consent or approval”? So, we wonder, does this mentality justify a surgical removal of the lives of the children with ailments or Down’s syndrome that we see around us, because we didn’t remove their lives before they were born?

Conceding to the mentality of abortion is a clear indication of hypocrisy, resignation from Civilization and every noble mission of man!

Society has not been fully acquainted with the details of this crime, which is being committed every day. It may be because this cover-up accommodates certain people; it may be, that with the legislation that allows free rein to the abortion clinics (=the opposite of maternity clinics), certain people have found a steady source of income for themselves.

The unveiling of what “abortion” or “discontinuance of gestation” implies, is usually not appealing. Many people want to believe that the unborn child is only an appendage of the woman, or a creature without any conscience, or just another body part of hers, which she has the right to handle, in the way that she believes.

They do not know (and the powers that be unfortunately do not help them learn) that an embryo is a HUMAN BEING, a person, exactly like you and me, with exactly the same potentials and charismas that you and I had, before we were born.

Is this just another crime that is committed with a silent agreement, or is it evidence of our spiritual and virtual decay?

There are many who speak of “the woman’s right to abortion”, or, more elegantly, “her right to self-determine her own body”. But, who is the person that has the right to decide on another person’s right to live?

Even though the demographic problem in our country is a major issue, nevertheless, more than 300.000 abortions (not counting the illegal-undeclared ones) are performed, and this same tragedy is repeated every day, more than 850 times!

If the walls of a woman’s abdomen were transparent, so that we could actually see the embryo living and growing inside the pregnant woman, would abortions still be condoned?

Man is under the impression that he has deified himself, and can therefore modulate everything in accordance with his own personal comfort, even discarding the Almighty God into the waste basket, in the same way that so many innocent people, so many helpless babies were discarded during abortion.

However, the abortion receptacle does not always contain “useless remains”. The U.S.A., France, Britain, Germany and the Scandinavian countries have found a way of profitably marketing them:

THE COLLAGEN AND THE TISSUE OF ABORTED BABIES ARE SECURED BY MAJOR COMPANIES, IN ORDER TO PRODUCE COSMETIC PRODUCTS AND FACE CREAMS!

It has been called “abortion”, “extraction” or “discontinuance of gestation” by people with a blunted conscience, people with a self-interest, people who have shown total disregard of other people who have not yet been born, or, simply by people who are clueless or are informed, but lack morals.

How would you like to be aborted before being born, on someone else’s decision? If you were asked, would you accept? Would you consider any reason serious enough to justify the taking of your life?

Why do you “do unto others” that which you don’t want them to do to you?

In the Greek dictionary, the word “abortion” has its roots in the verb that denotes “traumatizing, wounding, causing of deterioration / damage, destroying, rendering useless”.

Whether in theory or in practice, abortion is an abhorrent crime.

What kind of medical ethics condone abortion? Thousands of years ago, Hippocrates in his Oath swore that: “I shall not administer any lethal medication, even if it is demanded of me….nor shall I provide a pregnant woman with any abortive poison…”

Abortion is not a solution. We can prove ourselves mature beings, and not expose ourselves to any such murderous dilemmas.

We should, as of this moment, attend meticulously to every parameter of our lives that might lead us to confront mistakes.

If we have made frequent mistakes, at least let’s not resort to abortion. Other solutions are available. A solution is the Orthodox Church, which sympathizes and assists in these circumstances. There is also the “Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child” (28 Epirou Street, Athens 10433, phone 210-8828788), which offers its undivided assistance to the unwed or wedded mother: practical, legal, financial, psychological, medical and social assistance.