Buddhism and Abortion

2nd Blog Post

I chose to research the Buddhism view on abortion because I thought it might be a complicated issue considering the cycle of samsara.  My researched showed that there is no universal view of abortion in Buddhism.  Traditional Buddhists seem to reject abortion and view it as the destruction of a life, however, modern Buddhists seem to feel all over the map about it. 

One of the central, if not the central, idea of Buddhism is understanding the effects of your actions and having responsibility for those consequences.  An abortion is an action that causes a very real consequence.  All over the world, whether an abortion is murder is stills something people are fighting over.

According to the BBC,

“According to the teachings of Buddha, five conditions must be present to constitute an act of killing.

·      The thing killed must be a living being

·      You, the killer, must know or be aware that it is a living being

·      You must have the intention to kill it

·      There must be an effort to kill

·      The Being must be killed as a result”

-BBC

            This metric makes it seem like abortion is killing, except the first two bullet points make it still up for debate.  Is a blastocyst or a fetus “a living being”?  And, if the person destroying the fetus doesn’t believe it is “a living being”, then is it not an act of killing?

There is also the very real issue that comedian Bo Burnham called, “the probable problem of a pro-life abortion” in his song “New Math”.  Abortions are performed in order to save a woman’s life every day.  The BBC article says that in these cases, it is the intentions with which the act is done that matter.  “If the decision is taken compassionately, ... the moral harm done will be reduced with the good intentions involved”  (BBC).

Interestingly, the Dalai Lama has spoken about abortions performed when it is discovered that the fetus will have severe developmental disabilities. 

“If the unborn child will be retarded or if the birth will create serious problems for the parent, these are cases where there can be an exception.  I think abortion should be approved or disapproved according to each circumstance.”

                        - Dalai Lama, New York Times, November 28, 1993

I think this statement is really interesting.  He starts out by basically saying he thinks that it is fine to abort mentally handicapped children – something that many would have moral problems with regardless of religion.  But he then backs off a bit saying it should be a case-by-case decision.  This is a very diplomatic answer – he basically leave the issue open for interpretation.

            The BBC article brought up an issue I didn’t even think of  - abortion is viewed as bad karma for the woman and abortionist, obviously, but apparently it is also viewed as bad karma for the fetus as well.  This is because an abortion means the ‘soul’ is immediately sent back to the cycle of death and life without the chance to accumulate good karma.

            Something that came up in multiple articles I read was Japan’s relationship with Buddhism and abortion.  Abortion is extremely common there, and so a tradition has developed of making offerings to Jizo, god of lost travellers and children, during a memorial service for the aborted fetus that incorporates Buddhist as well as Shinto and local traditions.  This practice is rejected by most Buddhist organizations because the practice has no basis in Buddhist texts.  It is also problematic because some temples will exploit women who have had an abortion by charging them money for these services and instilling fear that if they don’t use the services they could be victims of retribution from the fetus’ soul.

            I  am glad I did this research because it turned out to be a more complicated issue than I initially thought.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/buddhistethics/abortion.shtml