I also wanted to comment in reference to ilovespyridon's comments:
Our death-denying society is not pro-life. I don't agree with everything Alexander Schmemann says, but in [url=http://books.google.com/books?id=47ncMCfOj58C&printsec=frontcover&dq=for the life of the world&ei=WwQLTHaL-DXotJy5DA&cd=1#v=onepage&q=death&f=false]For the Life of the World[/url], chapter 6, \"Trampling Down Death by Death\", or the theme shot through the Philokalia of remembering that we are approaching death. On this point our society is in denial.
Barring a quick return on the Lord's part, all of us are approaching death. We cannot choose whether we approach death, only whether we do so wisely or foolishly, in light or in darkness. Even doctors and hospitals never prevent death. They may postpone it, and the new illusions in anti-aging medicine may offer hollow hope of escaping even inevitable death through ripe old age, but not even the best hospitals can prevent death; they can at their most successful postpone this fact of life, but it is a basic philosophical error to ask medicine to free us from the reality of death.
Now I am not hereby saying that people like elena86 are choosing an unacceptable position. Orthodox Judaism is misportrayed by people who interpret it as saying that a child does not possess the breath of life until first breath of air outside the womb, but it does prefer the life of the mother to that of the child.
Pro-life accepts life and death as alike given by God. It says \"no\" to certain deaths: killing an unborn child, at least outside of grave circumstances, \"mercy deaths\" (to use the Nazi euphemism) for the sick and suffering, and other things. It does not say \"no\" to the death by which God conditions our ascesis, and for that matter it does not say \"no\" to choosing to be killed as a martyr or hero: the soldier who jumps onto a grenade in a foxhole so that others may live does not do what \"pro-life\" objects to in suicide. G.K. Chesterton said that courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it is a strong will to live taking the form of a willingness to die.
The Fathers did not speak in terms of being pro-life, even though they knew of abortion and infanticide and other such, and opposed them in the most unambiguous terms. Their condemnation of the murder of children is in continuity with spending our lives in preparation for death, and taking up our cross and dying a little each day in preparation for when we will no longer have a decision to make and we will either trample death by death or lose our lives by trying to hold onto it.
I'm a cancer survivor, and one thing I realized in chemo was that I could die without regrets if it turned out that my life would end shortly. As it turns out, I have been cancer-free for long enough that it is unlikely that I will die of cancer. But the treatment didn't prevent me from dying; it couldn't. It postponed it, and I am grateful for time to attempt good works, but twenty years ago I would have been under a medical death sentence...
but I would still have been under the sovereignty of God, and his grace could have reached me just as much if my life had come to a close then.
If you want an Orthodox view on life, prepare for death.
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