Theosophy - Is Foeticide A Crime? Reply by H.P.Blavatsky
[A
letter, and a reply by H. P. Blavatsky, from the THEOSOPHIST, August 1883]
Is Foeticide A Crime?
The articles in your
paper headed "Is Suicide a Crime?" have suggested to my mind to ask
another question, "Is Foeticide a crime?" Not that I personally have
any serious doubts about the unlawfulness of such an act; but the custom prevails
to such an extent in the United States that there are comparatively only few
persons who can see any wrong in it. Medicines for this purpose are openly advertised
and sold; in "respectable families" the ceremony is regularly performed
every year, and the family physician who should presume to refuse to undertake
such a job, would be peremptorily dismissed, to be replaced by a more accommodating
one.
I have conversed
with physicians, who have no more conscientious scruples to produce an abortion,
than to administer a physic; on the other hand there are certain tracts from
orthodox channels published against this practice; but they are mostly so overdrawn
in describing the "fearful consequences," as to lose their power over
the ordinary reader by virtue of their absurdity.
It must be confessed
that there are certain circumstances under which it might appear that it would
be the best thing as well for the child that is to be born as for the community
at large, that its coming should be prevented. For instance, in a case where
the mother earnestly desires the destruction of the child, her desire will probably
influence the formation of the character of the child and render him in his
days of maturity a murderer, a jailbird, or a being for whom it would have been
better "if he never had been born."
But if foeticide
is justifiable, would it then not be still better to kill the child after it
is born, as then there would be no danger to the mother; and if it is justifiable
to kill children before or after they are born then the next question arises:
"At what age and under what circumstances is murder justifiable?"
As the above is a
question of vast importance for thousands of people, I should be thankful to
see it treated from the theosophical standpoint. --An "M.D." F.T.S.
George Town, Colorado, USA
*Editor's Note.*--:
"At no age as under no circumstance whatever is murder justifiable!"
and occult Theosophy
adds:--"yet it is neither from the standpoint 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.
[A letter, and a
reply by H. P. Blavatsky, from the THEOSOPHIST, August 1883] |