I do not say that feminism is an evil force. Like many other well-intended movements, its objectives are noble. Over the centuries women have been subjugated and often denied an existence, livelihood and life of parity with men. Certainly, this needed to be rectified and the feminist movement has indeed played a big role in achieving emancipation of women. (For futuristic thoughts on gender, this blog might be worth a peek http://karmasutratkos.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-changing-contours-of-gender.html).
However, on the issue of abortion
(or ‘voluntary abortion’ as it might be called to distinguish it from
miscarriage), the stand of most feminists is not congruent with the ideal of avoiding
negative karma in this universe. In this article, some of the arguments and their
counterarguments are discussed. Some practical
solutions the massive negativity of killing a foetus are also proffered.
Argument 1: “An apple seed is not the same as an apple
tree” is used to suggest that the
unborn foetus is not the same as a full human being. After all, an apple seed
thrown into a bin is not the same as cutting up an apple tree.
Counterargument : In case of an
apple seed, even after careful planting it will still take many years before it
becomes a robust tree. There are various factors such as soil conditions,
weather and so on which determine if the tree will finally happen. If it is a good apple sapling, the act of
destroying such a sapling would most likely amount to killing a tree before it
reaches the full potential. According to Centers for Disease control, in USA, as
on 2020, only 1 in 100 pregnancies are lost naturally. Hence, if killing a baby
is karmically negative and legally wrong and criminal, and the probability
of most foetuses becoming a baby is 99%, then there is no reason why killing a
foetus should not invite the same condemnation and punishment as killing a baby.
[There could be further elaborate
discussions on various stages from a zygote to an embryo to a foetus, but for
all practical purposes, the moment the sperm and egg fuse together, there is an
irreversible change which has happened and that new fused cell is a new
spiritual entity.]
Argument 2 : “All of women’s
aspirations – whether for education, work or any form of self-determination –
ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children.”
Susan Faludi.
Counterargument : Needless to
say, there is some truth in this statement. In many parts of the world, the
moment a woman decides to have a baby, her career and personal aspirations go
into deep freeze. The discomforts she faces during pregnancy – from morning
sickness to mood swings all have a detrimental impact on her job performance or
full-time education.
Having said this, except for
failure in contraception and rape (the situation of rape pregnancy is discussed
separately), pregnancy is something entered consciously by both parents. Some
people would like to pretend it was not a ‘conscious wish’, but just a
good-natured spontaneous love-making. If I throw a glass bottle high in the air
on a busy street, there is a good chance it will hit someone on the head. I
cannot escape the responsibility for it, by arguing that it was just
good-natured ‘spontaneous’ act.
This brings us to the other part
of the same argument which is Faludi’s implicit complaint that while the
pregnancy happens due to an act indulged in by both men and women, women seem
to have to bear the lion’s share of the ‘adverse’ consequences starting from
the physical symptoms to the collateral damage to career and/or education. Yes,
while that is unfair and men should bear equal responsibility for their part of
their contribution to the pregnancy, one must remember that this (physical
burden of pregnancy) was not created by any man-made system injustice. Moreover, punishing a third party namely, the
unborn child, by killing it, does not make this inequality right (‘two
wrongs do not make a right’ principle).
Argument 3 : “To use a woman's
body, against her free will and choice, as a receptacle for unwanted pregnancy
has got to be seen as a kind of 'legalized rape'……..”Howard Moody.
Counterargument: This is the more
elaborate version of the slogan ‘my body, my choice’, sometimes simply referred
to as ‘pro-choice’. The word
‘pro-choice’ almost makes it sound like the fight for the right to kill an
unborn baby is a fundamental choice that women should have in free societies. It
makes women look like the victim, forgetting that the foetus is the one killed
at the end. Hence, unsurprisingly, in order to make women forget the killing
part, milder terms were designed to camouflage it, for example, by calling it ‘abortion’.
Sometimes even this is further diluted with terms such as ‘removal’, to create an impression that it is a mere
commonplace surgical procedure such as removal of a non-malignant growth. Another
term often used is ‘terminating a pregnancy’ as if the decision to terminate a
pregnancy by killing a foetus is as simple as closing a tap or putting off a
light switch. Do we use similar euphemistic positive phrases for ‘shooting a
human who enters our house without permission’ or ‘killing a tenant who
refuses to vacate our property’?
If we look at the womb as a
temporary accommodation for an unborn child, should the owner of the
accommodation (the mother) have the right to kill the temporary occupant
(unborn child), assuming the occupant is not wanted by the owner? In case of
unwanted tenants who refuse to leave our accommodation despite our written notices,
the state permits us to evict them by the due process of law. However, no humane
state (to the best of my knowledge) allows us to kill the occupants of my
property just because I do not want them anymore on my property. Then why is
this terrible deed permitted by nations when it comes to an unborn baby, which
is only temporarily occupying the bodily space of the mother?
This also brings us to one of the
possible solutions for abortion in a civilised, ethical and humane society. In
an advanced society, if a woman does not want to have a baby for any reason,
the state must use advanced medical technology to transfer the baby from the
womb of the mother to a facility where children can be brought up by the state.
If the pregnancy was the result of voluntary sexual intercourse, and provided
the mother/father are financially capable, then the mother/father must also pay
a one-time discharge fee for contribution towards the child’s upkeep. Then the
parents must sign a discharge agreement giving up all her rights to their baby.
The state must bring up these babies and perhaps put them up for adoption by
genuinely interested, child-seeking families.
Hang on, some feminists
might argue. Is it not the owner’s right on how their body should be used? How
can the uterus and a woman’s entire body be compared to an inanimate object
like a rented room or house?
As mentioned in the 2016 book ‘Karmasutra The Karma of Sex’ (chapter 12), this idea that every bit of my body is owned
by me and therefore only I must decide how to use it as I think fit, is the
fundamental flaw with the paradigm of freedom in Western societies. When we
often talk of ‘I’ very often we talk of our intelligence and conscious brain
power alone. But the reality of karma is that every unit of our body starting
from the cell to organs have their own intelligence and will. As the bullish
leader (monarch) of this parliament (of our body), the brain and conscious intelligence often
take the final decisions. But this does not mean our leader (the conscious
brain) is always right. For example, our leader sometimes decides it is ‘okay’
to consume copious quantities of alcohol (far exceeding what is easily
manageable). If we were able to hear the voice of liver, whose job is to
detoxify our body of these incoming toxins, we would have known that Mr./Ms. Liver
was screaming hoarse about not wanting any alcoholic drinks. Similarly when a
person decides to tattoo his/her skin extensively, he/she thinks they are only
doing what they love to their body. However, if Mr. (or Ms.) Skin’s
opinion was sought, we would know that it is a gross violation of skin’s right
not to be poked, disfigured or pierced.
My point is that pegging
the whole paradigm of freedom to the idea of ‘individual freedom’ and then linking
this individual freedom to the will of the conscious brain alone (as the last
point of call) is a grossly erroneous paradigm. Under this faulty paradigm, societies
which call themselves humane, have historically done grave injustices to those
who have not been able to articulate their views, using a logical pathway.
To some extent, humane societies
have made laws to protect these groups despite their inability to articulate
their own rights - for example, children below talking age, mentally
challenged, animals and so on. Yet, even
in such so-called ‘humane societies’, there are entities which have their own
will which is still not acknowledged merely because these entities are unable to
make their ‘will’ known. (For example,
individual organs of the body, foetus inside a womb etc. are still considered
decisions of the individual’s conscious brains, even when the decisions of the
conscious brain go against the actual wishes of these entities.) Simply because
there is no existing technology to listen to what these entities have to ‘say’,
we assume these entities have no will. This is a fundamentally wrong assumption,
which ethical societies need to get rid of.
I am hopeful that this era will
pass and we will come to a more technologically advanced era, where we will be more
clearly able to listen to the will of individual organs and the will of unborn
babies. Hence, when that era comes (and it may not be too far away),
societies/civilisations which call themselves humane will have the duty to
listen to both a woman’s uterus and other important reproductive organs as well
as the unborn baby, when it comes to abortion.
Even if the last two paragraphs
above are more doxological than a ‘scientific’ argument (based on what we currently
know), the important ethical principles that must guide our thinking on
abortion should be:
a) No owner of property has the
right to kill his/her unwanted tenants
and
b) A third, innocent party should
not have to pay for the mistake(s) of other(s) because two wrongs do not make a
right.
And to the hardcore feminists I
would say:
Emancipation of one suffering
group should not be at the cost of other speechless beings and their right to
live.
When travelling towards light,
dark, unethical, torturous pathways are not always unavoidable. Often, there are better lit, but longer roads
available.
©Staju Jacob, 2022.
Staju Jacob is the author of the path-breaking book Karmasutra The Karma of Sex, which deals with the karmic spirituality of consensual sexual actions. This book is available globally on various Amazon sites in Paperback and Kindle, Sony Kobo, Google books, Iphone Ibook etc. He may be contacted on Twitter @KaRmasutraTKOS or through www.staju.com
