Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
I really wonder who has lost his or her mental bearings, AEN or me?
As I said before, it's the final and last resort that an abortion
is considered as a solution. However, AEN just generalised that
abortions are totally unnecessary even in extreme cases or
emergencies. In fact, AEN considers abortions in such cases as
generating negative karma.
How long can a parent breath for a child? How long can a parent
clear out toxins from a kidneyless and liverless baby? Given our
modern medical capabilities, years of painful and torturing
survival will be entailed. A properly planned and executed abortion
is meant to be prevent such painful sufferings for both parent and
child. I have heard of cases of children born without the means to
survive and kept on life preserving equipment until necrotic
infection sets in. This is a sad day indeed as buddhists have lost
all wisdom and humanity from Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings.
Most of the time abortions are not the last solutions, only in
minority cases are they aborted due to obvious dangers to mother's
life, etc. Abortion rate in Singapore is about 25% of babies, I
believe most babies are aborted due to reasons like teenage sex,
etc.
The Hippocratic Oath has a lot to do with preserving lives.
Unfortunately AEN has failed to realise the fact that in the case
of abortion, triage, a method of deciding how best to preserve
life, is often practiced. In this case, the baby's life is
considered as below the mother's life in value and is thus
sacrificed for the well-being of the mother. In fact, the Oath has
been reworded recently in the last century to allow for abortions
as both unborn child and mother are the physician's patients.
In most cases, preserving lives means NOT to abort. In the case
of saving mother's life during emergency situations, nevertheless
there is karma for killing although the level of karma may be
different for killing the baby for other unnecessary reasons (i.e
due to unwanted babies). A big problem is many people abort the
babies with excuses of medical symptom but in actuality it is just
a fictitious excuse. Anyway so I was saying whatever the reasons
for aborting the baby there is karma involved, so if one has
aborted the baby one has to practise the things that can clear our
and the babies' karma.
