Former Yugoslav abortionist embraces life

http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=29347

BELGRADE, Serbia (BP)--A physician once considered a champion of abortion in the former Yugoslavia now defends the lives of unborn children.

Sotjan Adasevic said he performed a total of 48,000 abortions, sometimes as many as 35 a day in Yugoslav hospitals under the former communist regime, until a dream caused him to have second thoughts about what he was doing.

Adasevic told the Spanish newspaper La Razon that he "dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence." The man identified himself to Adasevic as Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th-century Roman Catholic theologian. The man in his dream told Adasevic the young people were individuals Adasevic had killed in abortions.

The dream repeated each night, awakening Adasevic in a cold sweat, and he began to think he should stop performing abortions, according to a report in the Catholic News Agency Nov. 12. It took a dramatic experience during an abortion, however, to finally end his 26 years as an abortionist.

A cousin brought his girlfriend, who was four months pregnant, into Adasevic's clinic to get an abortion -- her ninth. Adasevic agreed to conduct the procedure but when he removed the fetus, the baby's heart was still beating. Adasevic was stunned to realize he had killed a human being. When he told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions, his salary was cut in half, his daughter was fired from her job and his son was barred from entering the university.

Adasevic found himself under a great deal of pressure to resume conducting abortions and was on the verge of giving in when he had yet another dream about Aquinas, according to the Catholic News Agency article. "You are my good friend, keep going,' the man in his dream told him. Adasevic returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood and actively joined the pro-life movement in his country. He persuaded Yugoslav television to twice air the classic anti-abortion film "The Silent Scream" featuring Bernard Nathanson.

Today, the article noted, Adasevic is "the most important pro-life leader in Serbia."
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Compiled by Baptist Press assistant editor Mark Kelly.