Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00721)

On Wed, 30 Oct 1996 kymsmith@micron.net wrote:

> 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?

	As far as I know, this is the only writing on this issue I have
seen from HPB. Thanks for posting here.

>
> 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?

	Most are pro-choice and are "true" Theosophists. Who can judge if
anyone is a "true" Theosophist.

	From a first hand experience, I can say when faced with a
abortion decision, there are lot of factors involved and only those
affected know them. So each one of us use our best judgement and decide
and no one else could judge anyone else's decision.

	MK Ramadoss


>
> ******
>
> . . .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
>
>