Changes

Depending upon whom you ask, there are many different stages during which an unborn life may be aborted upon request. For example, the unborn child might an embryo, it may have not implanted in the womb, it may still be without a heartbeat, it may not have a distinct human form yet, or it may be too young to survive outside the womb. Almost all people agree that the unborn child is a human by the time of birth. However, it is the Orthodox Christian belief that a human is made after the image of God at the moment of conception. In fact, all people are temples of the [[Holy Spirit]] once they are conceived. Additionally, the Orthodox Church has [[feast day]]s celebrating conceptions: [[Annunciation]] to the [[Virgin Mary]] on [[March 25]], the Conception by St. [[Joachim and Anna|Anna]] of the Theotokos on [[December 9]], and the Conception of St. [[John the Forerunner|John the Forerunner and Baptist]] on [[September 23]].

:''Because our humanity is a psychosomatic unity and because Orthodox Christians see all of life as a continuous and never ending development of the image and likeness toward [[theosis]] and full humanity, the achievement of particular stages of development of the conceptus is not ethically relevant to the question of abortion.