Who Is Really Pro-Life?

Introduction

Occasionally a person, in the course of conversation with me, has made such a comment as "Well, of course, you're a very spiritual person so you're obviously pro-life, aren't you."

What these people actually mean is not pro-life (which pretty well all of us are), but anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia. This is the same sort of dishonesty as we get in the UK from the pro-foxhunting lobby who often describe themselves not as pro-foxhunting but as 'for the countryside', as though the countryside and its wellbeing depended on foxhunting. The aim is to cause confusion and try to give the impression that their views and their campaign have a respectability and purpose for Humanity which in fact they lack.

Yes, abortion and euthanasia are serious matters, but the issues have been hijacked by right-wing 'religious' (actually political) groups which want to impose their own strict and rigidly defined moral code upon others.

Abortion and voluntary euthanasia are complex issues, and condemning them and seeking to ban them reflects a simplistic moralistic view and not a true understanding of the ethical issues involved. As you will see in a moment, I'm most certainly not pro-abortion, but I'm not taking sides in the highly emotive debate between polarized factions.

Abortion

Here, then, is my challenge to all who seek to minimize the seriousness of abortion.
It is my understanding from my own channelled information and insights into the life process, that the incarnating consciousness connects with the physical new person-to-be AT CONCEPTION, and then, through the operation of a subtle energy field, directs many aspects of the physical development of the embryo as the new being's energy system (including what we know as the aura) gradually develops.

This means that there is no 'safe period' when the loss of an embryo does not represent death of at least an incipient human complete with consciousness. Of course in the very early stages the consciousness is not aware through what we would recognise as sense organs, so its awareness is much more subtle than what we normally think of as awareness, but it is there.

On the other hand, the capacity to suffer comes later on, when the brain and mind have developed sufficiently.

There is a real need, then, for people to be educated about these simple facts, so that they can then make their decisions on the basis of proper information and whatever wisdom and compassion they can manifest. Undoubtedly those who are not well tuned-in to their innate wisdom and compassion would still follow the line of "Okay, if I get pregnant I'll have an abortion", as though having an abortion were as obvious and straightforward an act as having a crap. To such a person a new human life is seen as an unwanted waste product of the sex act, fit only for the lavatory or clinical waste bin.

Inevitably the anti-abortionists would want to stop these women from aborting their foetuses, but unfortunately the anti-abortion lobbyists have scant understanding of life and death, and indeed of true compassionate, wise, ethical behaviour.

True wisdom and compassion are not rigid like the 'moral codes' that religious lobbies seek to impose on people. It's so very easy to say "Thou shalt not take another person's or your own life", and impose that as a rigid rule for everyone to abide by without ever getting to understand individual circumstances and the true significance of life and death and living and dying. Following a rule or regulation is not the manifestation of wisdom or of compassion, for these two latter come from within, and you gain wisdom and compassion through making your life decisions out of a process of self examination.

Here is an interesting question for the religious factions that are calling themselves 'pro-life'. If it is so important that all life be preserved regardless of any deeper issues, how is it that God throws away human lives by the myriad, or at least allows those lives to be thrown away?

The wiser person understands that death is an intrinsic part of the life process, and indeed of our evolutionary process through a vast number of sequential lifetimes in which we learn and progressively gain wisdom and open up the universal love and compassion which is in our 'Divine' core.

Note this well -- Particular human consciousnesses actually choose to incarnate in situations where they will very likely experience 'abortion'. They do so compassionately, in order to give the prospective parents learning opportunities in which they have the challenge of deciding whether or not to take responsibility for their actions and to allow their foetus to develop and to bring into this world a loved and happy new human being. Those consciousnesses which do experience abortion go on to reincarnate again, so they are not lost as a result of the abortions, and in some cases would even choose to offer themselves again for an incarnation which is likely to get aborted.

Education is one thing, but banning of abortion is an attempt to take away people's opportunities to develop a deep sense of personal responsibility and compassion through learning from their 'wrong' decisions. If you don't allow people to do anything 'wrong', you have turned them into puppets and not beings of love, compassion and true responsibility. Indeed, in the event of a ban, many would just 'go underground' to have their abortions done illegally, and so endanger themselves. Of those who give in to the pressure to keep an unwanted foetus, many will be very unsatisfactory parents because they have an unwanted baby. That of course is also a learning opportunity for the reluctant parent, but at the expense of the unwanted infant, who would have an unhappy and in some cases abusive upbringing.

The anti-abortionists are particularly lacking in compassion and understanding with regard to desperate situations such as when a woman has conceived following being raped. Is she then really to be condemned to bearing the child of her attacker? If she is to be so condemned, then in what sort of home and upbringing and emotional environment is that child likely to grow up?

I am most certainly not suggesting that abortion should be an automatic option in such cases, because here and there are women whose love and compassion are so highly developed that they truly want and love the child despite the traumatic circumstances of its conception. But for the majority of women, to be forced to bear the child of their attacker would be a monstrous second violation.

Euthanasia (voluntary)

I am not discussing here non-voluntary euthanasia, which is a different issue and generally difficult to justify on ethical grounds.

At the other end of the life process, the undue extension of a person's physical life is highly problematical and not compassionate at all. It is based in the materialistic ignorance of reincarnation and the need for a person, when their time has come, to move on for their next incarnation. Trying to delay that person's departure is simply delaying their reincarnation and therefore is not pro-life in any way whatsoever. Rather than pro-life, it is against-death, which is a negative, fear-based attitude. It also gives the dying person the scary message that death is something to try and avoid, which is very much at variance from what (s)he needs to hear at that point.

When a person is in some sort of 'terminal agony', it is very important that the person receives warmth and emotional support from other people to help that person's physical existence still to be bearable. However, if that person still feels life to be unbearable, then we are faced with an ethical 'grey area' in which there is no one right course of action. Such situations serve a very strong purpose in giving learning opportunities for the opening up of the deepest compassion in all those involved.

Typically, at least in Western cultures, a dying person is seen as having no right to self determination, and this needs to change. It can be said that the person is no longer of sound mind, but nonetheless, if (s)he is crazed by terminal suffering, and wants to end it, then where is the compassion in not complying with their desperate wish in their personal agony and enabling them to gain release and go on to reincarnate - whether it be through withdrawal of life support measures or by overt causing of death by some gentle means?

Suicide

Apparently suicide is okay and to be allowed as long as you do it gradually, such as by smoking, and don't actually think of yourself as committing suicide even though, at least in the back of your mind, you know perfectly well that in the long term you are killing yourself.

People generally are thus very hypocritical about killing oneself. In fact, as well as the ethical considerations for seeking to prevent people from committing suicide, there is also a strong ethical case for allowing people to do it, for it comes down to free choice and self determination. This latter is tacitly accepted as people are allowed to smoke or (in most countries) to regularly drink alcohol to excess.

If a person is not harming others by doing so, there is an ethical case for his being allowed the choice to end his life. When you understand that a person who ends his life is going to reincarnate again, this does make sense. In the long term, a person who commits suicide, perhaps repeatedly over a succession of lifetimes, learns more deeply to value life. I am not promoting or condoning suicide at all, but I am at least being honest about the positive as well as negative side of it. All our apparent adversities do have a positive side, at least in the learning and gaining of wisdom which they afford us.

The person who commits suicide would still have to face up to the issues which caused him to end his life in the current incarnation, so that suicide isn't the easy escape which it may appear to be, even though a long-term learning does occur. As a general statement, terminating one's life now would continue one's rough and tormented course, leaving one with troublesome problems in the next lifetime. However, each person's situation is unique, and there are particular situations for particular people where the suicide would very likely not carry much over to pick up and clear in future lifetimes, because there was some special higher purpose for its happening at that point. What is so troublesome about rules and so-called moral codes is that they do not allow for the uniqueness of each person and his particular life situations.

The prime need, however, for somebody who is feeling suicidal, is emotional support from other people, and this is all too often lacking, for still few people know how to really give effective emotional support or have the sort of depth of awareness that would enable them to do so. This is the prime and most desirable way of preventing suicide - not condemning a person (by simply preventing the suicide) to unendurable suffering of which you have no experience nor understanding yourself but only a sense of your own rightness in your opinion.

Conclusion

I am not falling into the popular trap of saying 'right' or 'wrong' to these issues. I have sought here to point to the complex ethical issues which need weighing up with discernment, love and compassion and not zealously held opinion about rightness or wrongness as decreed in some externally applied moral code.

As for the so-called pro-life lobbyists, I assume they are all non-smoking, more or less non-alcohol-drinking vegetarian pacifists...?  You see, rigid rules make straightaway for hypocrisy, because the rules tend to get broken wherever they aren't convenient for the religious / political / personal agendas of the people supposedly applying them.