Buddhist perspectives on the abortion debate
The United States has struggled with the abortion issue for many years without reaching a consensus. We need a new perspective, the Buddhist view of the abortion issue could provide one.
Buddhism regards abortion as the taking of a human life. At the same time, Buddhists are generally reluctant to intervene in a woman's personal decision to terminate a pregnancy. Buddhism may discourage abortion, but it also discourages the imposition of rigid moral absolutes.
This may seem contradictory. In our culture, many think that if something is morally wrong it should be banned. However, Buddhist opinion is that strict compliance with the rules is not what makes us moral. Furthermore, the imposition of authoritative rules often creates a new set of moral errors.
What about rights?
First, the Buddhist view of abortion does not include a concept of rights, nor a "right to life" or a "right to one's own body". In part this is due to the fact that Buddhism is a very ancient religion and the concept of human rights is relatively recent. However, tackling abortion as a simple matter of "rights" does not seem to lead us anywhere.
"Rights" are defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as "rights (not) to perform certain actions or be in certain states, or rights that others (not) perform certain actions or be in certain states". In this topic, a right becomes a winning card which, if played, wins the hand and closes any further consideration of the problem. However, activists both for and against legal abortion believe that their winning card beats the other party's winning card. So nothing is solved.
When does life begin?
Scientists tell us that life started on this planet about 4 billion years ago and since then life has expressed itself in different forms beyond counting. But nobody observed it "at the beginning". We living beings are manifestations of an uninterrupted process that has lasted for 4 billion years, come on or on. For me "When does life start?" it is a meaningless question.
And if you understand yourself as the culmination of a 4 billion year process, then is conception really more significant than the moment your grandfather met your grandmother? Is there a moment in those 4 billion years truly separable from all the other moments and cellular couplings and divisions ranging from the first macromolecules to the beginning of life, assuming that life began?
You may ask: What about the individual soul? One of the most basic, most essential and most difficult teachings of Buddhism is the anatman or the anatta - no soul. Buddhism teaches that our physical bodies are not possessed by an intrinsic self and that our persistent sense of ourselves as separate from the rest of the universe is an illusion.
Understand that this is not a nihilistic teaching. The Buddha taught that if we can see through the illusion of the small individual self, we realize an unlimited "I" that is not subject to birth and death.
What is the Self?
Our judgments on issues depend heavily on how we conceptualize them. In Western culture, we mean individuals as autonomous units. Most religions teach that these autonomous units are invested with a soul.
According to Anatman's doctrine, what we think of as our "self" is a temporary creation of skandhas. Skandhas are attributes - form, senses, cognition, discrimination, consciousness - that come together to create a distinctive living being.
Since there is no soul to transmigrate from one body to another, there is no "reincarnation" in the usual sense of the word. Rebirth occurs when the karma created by one past life passes to another life. Most Buddhism schools teach that conception is the beginning of the rebirth process and therefore marks the beginning of a human's life.
The first precept
The first precept of Buddhism is often translated "I pledge to refrain from destroying life". Some Buddhism schools make a distinction between animal and plant life, others do not. Although human life is the most important, the precept warns us to refrain from taking life in any of its countless manifestations.
Having said that, there is no doubt that terminating a pregnancy is an extremely serious matter. Abortion is considered to take a human life and is strongly discouraged by Buddhist teachings.
Buddhism teaches us not to impose our opinions on others and to have compassion for those who face difficult situations. Although some predominantly Buddhist countries, such as Thailand, impose legal restrictions on abortion, many Buddhists do not think that the state should intervene in matters of conscience.
The Buddhist approach to morality
Buddhism does not approach morality by distributing absolute rules to be followed in all circumstances. Instead, it provides guidance to help us see how what we do affects ourselves and others. The karma we create with our thoughts, words and actions keeps us subject to cause and effect. Therefore, we take responsibility for our actions and the results of our actions. Even the precepts are not commandments, but principles, and it is up to us to decide how to apply these principles to our lives.
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, professor of theology and nun of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, explains:
“There are no moral absolutes in Buddhism and it is recognized that ethical decision making involves a complex link of causes and conditions. "Buddhism" encompasses a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices and the canonical scriptures leave room for a number of interpretations. All of these are based on a theory of intentionality and individuals are encouraged to carefully analyze the issues themselves ... When making moral choices, individuals are advised to examine their motivation - whether aversion, attachment, ignorance, wisdom or compassion - and weigh the consequences of their actions in light of the Buddha's teachings. "
What's wrong with moral absolutes?
Our culture attaches great value to something called "moral clarity". Moral clarity is rarely defined, but it can also mean ignoring the more disordered aspects of complex moral issues so that simple and rigid rules can be applied to solve them. If you take into account all aspects of a problem, you risk being unclear.
Moral enlighteners love to rework all ethical problems into simple equations of right and wrong, good and bad. It is assumed that a problem can only have two parts and that one part must be entirely right and the other part entirely wrong. Complex problems are simplified, simplified and stripped of all ambiguous aspects to adapt them to "right" and "wrong" boxes.
For a Buddhist, this is a dishonest and unkind way of approaching morality.
In the case of abortion, people who have taken a part often casually dismiss the concerns of any other party. For example, in many anti-abortion publications women who have abortions are portrayed as selfish or reckless, or sometimes just plain evil. The real problems that an unwanted pregnancy could bring to a woman's life are not honestly recognized. Moralists sometimes discuss embryos, pregnancy and abortion without mentioning women at all. At the same time, those who favor legal abortion sometimes fail to recognize the humanity of the fetus.
The fruits of absolutism
Although Buddhism discourages abortion, we see that criminalizing abortion causes a lot of suffering. The Alan Guttmacher Institute documents that the criminalization of abortion does not stop or even reduce it. Instead, abortion goes underground and is performed in unsafe conditions.
In desperation, women undergo non-sterile procedures. They drink bleach or turpentine, pierce themselves with sticks and hangers and even jump from the roofs. Around the world, unsafe abortion procedures result in the death of approximately 67.000 women per year, especially in countries where abortion is illegal.
Those with "moral clarity" can ignore this suffering. A Buddhist cannot. In his book The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics, Robert Aitken Roshi said (p.17): “Absolute position, when isolated, completely omits human details. Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. of them who take their own lives, because then they use us “.
The Buddhist approach
An almost universal consensus among Buddhist ethics that the best approach to the abortion issue is to educate people about birth control and encourage them to use contraceptives. Besides that, as Karma Lekshe Tsomo writes,
"In the end, most Buddhists recognize the inconsistency that exists between ethical theory and real practice and, although they do not forgive the taking of life, they support understanding and compassion for all living beings, a loving kindness that does not judges and respects the right and freedom of human beings to make their own choices ".