When Does Life Begin?
The question of when human life begins is often asked with the modern-day controversy over abortion in mind. In speaking of this delicate subject with my devotees, I have explained that conceiving a child is like planting a seed in the ground. Although you may not see anything for a while, there are life forces building which will one day appear before your physical eyes, emerging out of the microcosm into the macrocosm, or First World. If you interrupt or cut off that process, for whatever reason, the consequences fall to you, according to the law of karma propounded by our Saiva faith.
Abortion is definitely a concern, not only to wives and daughters but to husbands as well. The aborted child, if allowed to live, may have become the husband’s heir, a preeminent member of society, and tenderly cared for him and his wife in their elder years. But they will never know and will always wonder, wonder.
Abortion is a concern all over India, where it is legal. Doctors there and elsewhere have developed an inexpensive version of the French "abortion pill." Many see this as a blessing for India’s population problem and a safer alternative to the thousands of surgical abortions performed each month, from which many women die or suffer infections. It is perhaps a good time to reflect on another side of this issue, on the karma and on dharma.
Wives often please their husbands by aborting an unwanted girl–which she is blamed for, when, in fact, it is the male sperm that determines the child’s gender–but secretly wonder, "Who is she? Who was she in her past life? Will she find another womb to incarnate through? Would she perhaps have become a Florence Nightingale, Madame Curie or Anandamayi Ma, a saint like Auvaiyar or Mirabai?" The subliminal subjective sadness that abortion brings, with all the "maybes" that lie unanswered, in itself is a sign from the soul that abortion is wrong; a new bad karma, a kukarmaphala, has been created. It did not have to be, but it was. After all, the still, small voice of the soul sometimes speaks loudly when a wrong is committed, and doesn’t stop talking until a counterbalancing punya, merit, is achieved and solace sought for.
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