Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00717)

Someone help me please!

Attached below is the only discussion I can find on abortion from a
Theosophical viewpoint - is there something else written that addresses this
particular issue?  Did Blavatsky ever write on this again?

I am confused by many of her answers.  She says the "fetus" doesn't have a
soul, like "small animals," and seems to call for governments to doubly
punish abortion. It would seem to follow through that the killing of small
animals should be severly punished (which sounds good to this tree-hugger).
How can it be "double suicide" if one is not yet viable? If "foeticide" is a
crime against nature, how does it differ from other crimes against nature,
or does it - Blavatsky seems to, on an emotional level, imply abortion is
different.  I understand the karma argument (I think), but I am puzzled a
bit on the rest of her answer.  Am I missing her point?

Can one be pro-choice and a 'true' Theosophist?

******

. . .a reply by H. P. Blavatsky, from the THEOSOPHIST, August 1883


"*Editor's Note.*--: "At no age as under no
circumstance whatever is murder justifiable!" and occult Theosophy
adds:--"yet it is neither from the stand-point of law, nor from any argument
drawn from one or another orthodox *ism* that the warning voice is sent forth
against the immoral and dangerous practice, but rather because in occult
philosophy both physiology and psychology show its disastrous consequence."
In the present case, the argument does not deal with the causes but with the
effects produced.  Our philosophy goes so far as to say that, if the Penal
Code of most countries punishes attempts at suicide, it ought, if at all
consistent with itself, to doubly punish foeticide as an attempt to *double
suicide*.  For, indeed, when even successful and the mother does not die just
then, *it still shortens her life on earth to prolong it with dreary
percentage in Kamaloka*, the intermediate sphere between the earth and the
region of rest, a place which is no "St. Patrick's purgatory," but a fact,
and a necessary halting place of the evolution in the degree of life.  The
crime committed lies precisely in the willful and sinful destruction of life,
and interference with the operations of nature, hence--with KARMA--that of
the mother and the would-be future human being.  The sin is not regarded by
the occultists as one of a *religious* character,--for, indeed, there is no
more of spirit and soul, for the matter of that, in a foetus or even in a
child before it arrives at self-consciousness, then there is in any other
small animal,--for we deny the absence of soul in either mineral, plant or
beast, and believe but in the difference of degree.  But foeticide is a crime
against nature.  Of course the skeptic of whatever class will sneer at our
notions and call them absurd superstitions and "unscientific twaddle."  But
we do not write for skeptics.  We have been asked to give the views of
Theosophy (or rather of occult philosophy) upon the subject, and we answer
the query as far as we know."

******


Thanks,

Kym