Maria Madise, blogpost
Today marks the sombre anniversary of legalised abortion, truly the greatest disgrace of our civilisation. Abortion, first legalised in Soviet Russia, 100 years ago, has killed more people than all the wars throughout human history combined. According to conservative estimates, the number of unborn children violently killed by abortion amount to over 1.5 billion and that would not include all those who have been killed by abortifacient drugs and IVF procedures.
Today this heinous crime against the most innocent of human beings is promoted by powerful governments and international agencies as a human right.
Anniversaries such as these offer nothing to celebrate, however, they give an opportunity to consider our responsibility to commit to the stopping of the evil which has been unleashed on such a tremendous scale.
Abortion was one of the first lethal attacks launched on the family by the Communist Revolution. On 17 December 1917, a few weeks after Bolsheviks seized power, divorce was introduced; in 1920 abortion was legalised without restriction; in 1922 prostitution and homosexuality were decriminalised. In 1923 Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, wrote: “The first period of family destruction is still far from being achieved. The disintegration process is in full swing.”
My home country Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union for a long time, represents the effects of this policy to this day, well beyond the period of Soviet occupation. Since 1955 when abortion was legalised on the Estonian territory, there have been over 1,5 million abortions, more than the current population of Estonia, which is 1,3 million. It is a tragic reality of a nation where more children have been aborted than born: virtually every family in Estonia has been affected by abortion in one way another, shaping the social attitudes today in a hidden but real way. Breakdown of families, dramatically decreasing number of marriages and children born to married couples show only some of the aftermath of the pain and distrust this tragedy has created. Underneath of it all is of course the rejection of God. A society that has lost the sense of God, in time, also loses the sense of man, that is, the sense of sacredness of God’s creation.
On the eve of the Communists’ seizure of power, the Mother of God appeared in Fatima to three young children. She asked that Russia be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart to prevent it from spreading its errors throughout the world. Abortion was legalised only three years after that. Has this not been the greatest error in human history that has been spread to virtually every corner of the world?
Hundred years of this tragedy have shown us the full evil of abortion and must be enough to mobilise our efforts and prayers to bring it to an end.