Let's Go to the Rudder 

 The Rudder, or the book that contains all of the Canons of the Orthodox Church, has some things to say about abortion.  Within the Orthodox Church, Canons are perpetual.  That is, they don't expire, so we are still held to those standards.  The Canons start with the Canons of the Holy Apostles, include all of the canons of the Ecumenical Councils, local councils, and Canons of various Church Fathers.

Canon 91, of the 6th Ecumenical Council has this to say:

for women who furnish drugs for the purpose of procuring abortion,and those who take foetus-killing poisons, they are made subject to the penalty prescribed for murderers.

Canon 2 of the 92 Canons of St. Basil says the following: 

A woman that aborts deliberately is liable to trial as a murderess. This is not a precise assertion of some figurative and inexpressible conception that passes current among us. For here there is involved the question of providing justice for the infant to be born, but also for the woman who has plotted against her own self. For in most cases the women die in the course of such operations. But besides this there is to be noted the fact that the destruction of the embryo constitutes another murder, at least in the opinion of those who dare to do these things. lt behooves us, however, not to extend their confession to the extreme limit of death but to admit them at the end of the moderate period of ten years, without specifying, a definite time, but adjusting the cure to the manner of penitence.

The term "confession here refers to how long the individual will be kept away from communion. St. Basil, interested as all Orthodox Fathers, in the healing of the individual, adjusts the timeframe below that of an "ordinary" murderer. This does not reflect the seriousness of the act, but rather the state of the penitent's soul.

There are some other references in the Rudder to abortion, but were all other recommendations for how long to keep from communion.  The view of the Orthodox Church is clear.

Posted: Wednesday - August 27, 2008 at 11:30 AM