What is the karmic significance of abortion to the mother, the father and the foetus?
Hilarion: The karmic significance depends to a great degree on the motives and reasons behind the action which terminates the life of the foetus.
Birth into earth incarnation is viewed on the higher planes as a a great opportunity for soul advancement, for learning, and for spiritual progress. It is also seen by prospective souls as a chance to rejoin loved ones, and to participate in the fullness of physical existence on one of the most beautiful planetary oases in the universe.
Thus from the point of view of the soul that might have come into the world in the aborted foetus, the abortion is merely the shutting of a door, the loss of an opportunity to advance. However, as a general rule, souls who lose the possibility of earth incarnation through deliberate abortion are given another opportunity to incarnate very soon thereafter.
For the woman who arranges or assents to an abortion, the pivotal question is motive. If it is done for strictly selfish reasons, especially when the the woman was in a situation in which the child could have been welcomed and cared for, then the killing of the foetus is counted as an act close to murder in the scale of seriousness. The karmic burden arising in such a circumstance is normally met and set aside through the experience of being denied a child when one is wanted...either later in the same life, or in some subsequent experience on the earth plane.
At the other end of the scale of motive is the situation in which there are persuasive reasons for terminating the pregnancy, reasons not related to selfish desires. For example, where there is a threat to the mother's life or health, or where no family situation exists capable of providing a good early life to the child, then abortion is not taken to be a particularly negative act. Some karma stems from it, of course, but it is generally not of a severe nature.
The father of the aborted child is also assessed in strict accordance with his motive, assuming he forces or persuades the mother to have an abortion. It is unnecessary to explain the matter in greater detail.
More Answers by Maurice Cook published in 1985
