Abortion in buddhism

Compare and assess the attitudes to abortion found in Theravada Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism, and assess the extent to which the Japanese mizuko kuyo rite for aborted foetuses has anything of value in it.

All traditional Buddhist sources agree that abortion is unskilful and that a monk who in any way involves himself with it on any stage is expulsed from the monastic sangha, never to be allowed in again in his present lifetime (Vin.I.97).

I have experienced some difficulties in finding contemporary, Danish teachers who were willing to share their Buddhist school's attitude on the subject of abortion. It seems that many try to avoid the subject because of the conflict between traditional Buddhism's emphasis on the value of life, and the answers their Western followers want to hear. In the West a lot of people might self-identify as 'Zen Buddhist' and yet be heavily influenced by other forms of Buddhism, New Age ideas or Western ethical thought. Many practitioners were originally attracted to Buddhism because they had a romantic idea about Buddhism - and some can't let go of the romantic fantasy, frantically trying to force Buddhism into the form they think is most appropriate. It has been especially difficult to get answers from the Theravada tradition. The ordained practitioners I have approached haven't been able to answer my questions in any relevant sense, partly due to language barriers, but also because they didn't feel that the questions had much relevance to their personal practice. When talking to lay practitioners serving as Dhamma-teachers and self-identifying as Theravada Buddhists, I have been given the answer that no common attitude is agreed upon, since it all depends on each person's interpretation of rebirth and the beginning of life; that maintaining any attitude to the question of abortion equals creation of additional suffering; and that Buddhism as such does not engage in ethical definitions (private interviews). I take this to be yet another case of people trying to make Buddhism into what they think it ought to have been.

Theravada Buddhism

The Theravada school follow the Pali Canon Vinaya, where at Vin.I.97 it is clearly stated that any monk "who deliberately deprives a human being of life, even to the extent of causing an abortion, is no longer a follower of the Buddha'.

Abortion is seen as a breach on the first precept not to take life, which is commonly thought of as the precept leading to the gravest karmic consequences when broken.

In negotiating culpability for violations of the first precept, the Theravadin commentator Buddhaghosa mentions five factors; 'a living being, the actual perceiving of a living being, a thought of killing, the attack, and death as a result of it' (Harvey 2000, p.52). Abortion clearly involves a living being, since according to the Buddha, life begins when three conditions are present; the union of the mother and father, the mother's season, and the presence of a being to be reborn (M.I.265-266), i.e. when conception takes place.

What about "the actual perceiving of a living being'? Some women clearly don't think about life in uteri as real life, as expressed by Oerenstein in her article "Mourning my Miscarriage"; "What I'd experienced had not been a full life, nor was it a full death, but it was a real loss'. According to the Vinaya there is no fault if a monk "fires an arrow at a living being, not knowing that it is a living being' (Harvey 2000, p.54). However, I ask myself if delusion is always a mitigating factor, or if certain things are presumed known?

"The thought of killing' is the intention behind the act. Only very few women have abortions performed unintentionally. Extremes aside, most women choose their abortion after careful consideration. It is arguable that the real intention is not so much to kill, but rather to provide the woman freedom of choice, from which perspective the killing is a regrettable side effect. However, implied in freedom of choice is also responsibility for one's choices, and the least harmful way to deal with unwanted pregnancy will always be putting the child up for adoption.

The next factor to take into consideration is "the attack' - the actual procedure. According to Buddhaghosa (as quoted in Harvey 2000, p.52), killing an animal implies greater fault when the animal is bigger, due to the effort involved, whereas killing a human implies greater fault when the human is "of many good qualities'. From this it would actually seem that abortion is as bad as killing a human, since the size criteria only applies to animals. However, when Buddhaghosa continues, he says that when size or good qualities are equal, the fault of the act is lesser or greater according to (a) the mental defilement involved and (b) the intensity of the attack (ibid).

(a) There is potentially much mental defilement involved in an abortion. Just to mention a few, we have the defilements that:

- this is "me' and this is "my body'
- the child in my uterus belongs to me, and I can do with it as I please
- the child in uterus doesn't constitute valid life (see also "the actual perceiving of a living being' above)
- the karmic consequences from an abortion is easier to live with than having the child
- the career I can develop and the money I can make if I don't have the child will bring me happiness
- the child is an intruder, and I have no responsibilities towards it.

Judging from Buddhaghosa's words, the least unskilful mindset involves acknowledging the fault of the action (ibid). Abortion would definitely still lead to a heavy karmic burden, especially since it is by definition premeditated, but it is better to do it knowingly than to carry out the act unknowing of its wrongfulness. This is because the karmic trace of an act is lesser when the act is performed hesitatingly and also because someone is likely to repeat an unskilful act when they don't know that it is indeed unskilful.

(b) The intensity of the attack is what helps us distinguish the karmic effects of later abortions from earlier, and also the killing of a human being before birth from later. It is not stated specifically that killing a human after birth is worse than killing a foetus, but the choice of words in the Vinaya suggest that it is indeed so; "... deprives a human being of life, even to the extent of causing an abortion...' (Vin.I.97, my emphasis). Buddhaghosa's commentary also reinforces this view in his discussion of the intensity of the attack (Harvey p. 52). Since the intensity of an attack is a factor in assessing culpability, it implies that there is a difference in karmic burden, both between early and late abortions, and between killing before and after birth, because an early abortion involves a fairly simple procedure; curettage, whereas late abortions involves inducing labour so the foetus will die either in the process of being born or right after from immaturity. Also, obviously the effort required to kill a child is inarguable greater than the effort involved in abortions of any kind.

Finally, Buddhaghosa mentions "Death as a result of it' (ibid). No matter how we look at it, aborting a child - or scraping foetal tissue from a body cavity - will result in death. This doesn't mean that there are no circumstances where the killing of a foetus can be categorized as a necessary evil - it just means that death is a result of abortion.

One way of mitigating culpability is by performing merit-creating rituals, e.g. donating to the sangha, dedicating the merits to the aborted child. Not only is the child thought to benefit from this extra merit, but the dedication in itself is also a skilful act for the woman. Though rarely mentioned, and to my knowledge never thoroughly described, such rituals are used by Thai women after abortion (Florida in Keown 2000, p.154). At first glance this concept of mitigating karmic consequences by transferring karma seems to be in tension with traditional Buddhist ideas about personal responsibility, but this potential conflict was solved by Theravadin commentators by interpreting such donations on other's behalf as being done with the other person's property.

Tibetan Buddhism

The monastic sangha in Tibetan Buddhism follow the Sarvastivadan Vinaya, which says; "Whatever monk intentionally with his own hand destroys the life of a human or a human foetus or supplies a weapon or searches for a slayer" and should he die by that, that monk... Cannot remain" (Stott, 181). Three contemporary teachers of Tibetan Buddhism are quoted as explicitly claiming that abortion equals killing a living being (Stott, 174-5).

Also lay practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism share this understanding. I interviewed Helle Westergaard from the Danish Karma Kadjy School, an experienced practitioner and trained social worker and psychologist, who affirmed the attitude found in scripture and international writings; abortion is murder, it is unskilful and only permissible when the life of the mother is jeopardized.

In Tibet, as well as Thailand, there are rituals to help women deal with abortion. Sincere repentance and self-purification, offerings dedicated to the child's future enlightenment are recommended, besides the traditional services performed for the dead (Harvey 2000, p.329 + Sogyal p.387). These rituals were not known in the Danish Karma Kadjy School, and thus not used. Instead the lama would offer personal guidance to women mourning or contemplating abortion.

Japanese Buddhism

Japanese Buddhism acknowledges that taking life, whether in uterus or later, is unskilful. Unfortunately, the situation in Japan is that abortion for many years has been the most frequently used form of birth-control. The official abortion rate is equivalent to that of Denmark; going down from 25.2 abortions pr. 1000 women of childbearing age in 1975 (23.7 in Demark) to 13.4 (Japan) (Denmark 13.7) in 1995 (Knudsen, and course notes, session 26,3). These figures, however, don't reflect the actual situation Many abortions are performed illegal for economic reasons. A common estimate is that only half - or even less - of the abortions performed are actually reported (Oerenstein, Brooks, Smith in Cabezon).

This means that it is common for a Japanese woman to have had two or more abortions when she's forty years old (Smith in Cabezon, p.71). Keeping in mind the sadness and feelings of loss reported by women who have aborted a child (Ibid), it is obvious that an enormous amount of suffering is created, and Japanese Buddhism has responded to this suffering with the mizuko kuyo.

Mizuko kuyo

The mizuko kuyo is a ritual (kuyo; literally "to offer and nourish') for aborted, miscarried or stillborn children (mizuko; literally "water-baby', indicating a child going directly from the water of the womb to a liquid state from where it will later emerge again). One reaction to the mizuko kuyo is a quick dismissal of the whole concept as a non-Buddhist money-making scam, preying on female fear and guild, but some researchers have shown a different picture (LaFleur 1992, Martin).

Japanese Buddhism describes abortion more as a matter of suffering for both parties than as a sinful act of the woman; "When I was in Japan in 1975, I would often ask Japanese Buddhist monks what they thought about abortion, and I got these very puzzling answers; -Of course we can't take life. Buddhist law doesn't allow us to do that. On the other hand, a woman shouldn't have to have a baby if she doesn't want to. A child should not be born into a family that doesn't want it. We must have compassion...' (La Fleur 1995b)

History

The mizuko kuyo rite seems to have existed for at least two hundred years, initially as spontaneous offerings to bodhisattva Jizo, who became known as the protector of children from the end of the 17th century, with Jizo statues dating as far back as 1710 (Brooks). LaFleur speculates that it could go back even further, as a mainly female concern; 'My sense is that the cult of Jizo, for the sake of dead or aborted children, has been maintained by women in a rather informal way for centuries, probably since as early as the medieval period' (La Fleur 1995b).

Today there is no set form of the ritual, but multiple ways to perform the mizuko kuyo according to people's wants and needs. Some place a memorial tablet or statue on the family butsudan (shrine) to include the mizuko in their regular prayers for ancestors, kami (Shinto deities) and Buddhas. Others prefer to have the ritual conducted in a more formal manner at a temple, either locally, or at one of the newer institutions specialized in mizuko kuyo.

Performing mizuko kuyo has been a great source of income for some institutions, Buddhist or otherwise. A lot of money is spent on the rites, especially in the larger, specialized temples. Generally speaking, the cost of performing the mizuko kuyo is higher when a one-time observance in one of the new mizuko kuyo-temples is performed, whereas less money and longer commitment seems to be involved when the woman chooses a smaller, more traditional Buddhist temple, or one with which she had a personal affiliation prior to the mizuko kuyo (Martin). It is clear that some temples benefits heavily from the mizuko kuyo, which is in some cases commercialized to the point where Internet sites provides easy and convenient access to your mizuko so an offering never is more than a click on a keyboard away (Gleeman).

This commercialization has caused economic and emotional exploitation of women. The large, specialized temples prey on female insecurity with most of their marketing efforts aimed at women, suggesting sole female responsibility for abortions;

"Why is it that only women have to suffer mizuko spirit attacks? asked twenty-one-year-old office worker Yamanashi Kyôko plaintively, since spring this year, she has been experiencing numerous illnesses of unknown cause. "My friends wonder whether my problems could be caused by mizuko spirits" said Ms. Yamanashi, looking back on her past. "Now that I think about it..."' (Young lady, as quoted in Hardacre, p.83)

Advertising efforts are focused on agitating feelings of guilt and fear, attributing all kinds of misfortune, disease or anxieties to previous abortions;

- marital problems, including sexual difficulties like nymphomania or strange growths on the genitals, infidelity or problems attracting a spouse
- all kinds of illnesses from pains in shoulders and hips, over menstrual irregularities to uterine tumours and cancer plus nervous disorders or nightmares
- problems related to children, family and future conception
- misfortune in general; traffic accidents, failed exams, work trouble etc. (Hardacre, p.81ff)

An example of the actual performance of the rite

In interviewing a number of Tendai priests I have learned that there is no specific service that is performed by all Tendai practitioners, and also that some Tendai temples specialize in mizuko kuyo, while some do not do them at all. The service described in the following is representative of what many would do. It is the regular Reiji Saho (Evening Service) which is a repentance ritual, with a few modifications. The ritual starts with a verse on "Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue':

All impurities are just as frost and dew
So wisdom's sun can disperse them.
Therefore, with entire devotion
Let us repent of our six sense organs.
(TBI, p. 41)

During the service, the family does a dedication with an incense-offering, and the Nembutsu (Amida Buddha's name) is chanted. Both the Heart Sutra and chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra are recited.

The mizuko does not receive a kaimyo (posthumous Buddhist name), but the family has a choice of receiving either a small Jizo statue or a toba (cenotaph). The family name with a statement dedicating the service and the implement to the mizuko is written on the toba or Jizo.

This service, and especially the opening verse, actually sums up the attitude towards abortion I found among Japanese Buddhists; taking the life of a living being is unambiguously unskilful, and condemning a woman for choosing to abort a child is unequivocally wrong. A person's negative karma is produced from their body, speech and mind, we all own our karma, and by acting responsibly and repenting faults we can lessen our karmic burden, even to the point where it is dispersed. The mizuko is a part of the family and should thus receive care - here in form of a ritual, dedication of merit, and either a statue or a toba. All in all, the ritual relies on traditional Buddhist thought in regards to care for ancestors by transferring merit to them.

The sutras recited also underline important features of the ritual. In chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra the Buddha assures all sentient beings that he is ready to help them, even if he appears to have entered parinirvana, and that this world of rebirth and suffering is in fact his tranquil land. The Heart Sutra shows the emptiness of all phenomena; life, death, suffering, extinguishing - even our karmic burden. It is however important to remember that there is a time and a place for everything. Both investigating the delusion in fixed views on "my body' belonging to "me' and contemplating the ultimate emptiness of child and mother, action and intension, are beneficial meditative exercises, but we must be very careful not to undermine our ethical basis in the process. It is good to keep in mind the admonition from the Sutra on Upasaka Precepts (p.171):

"Someone may say that the aggregate of form is neutral and so is life, and, as such, how can there be the offence of killing? Such an argument is not true. And why is it not true? Body and life are vehicles for good and bad minds. To destroy the vehicle is to destroy future good and bad minds and therefore is an offence."

Obviously, balancing between sharing the teachings of the Buddha in a conscientious way and not condemning women for their personal choices is a very demanding task for the ordained practitioners. In Tworkov's article, "Anti-abortion/Pro-choice', a Buddhist priest is quoted as saying that her commitment is to "support pregnant women in whatever choice they make.' (Tworkov p.63). While this perhaps sounds admirable at first, it will probably often lead to the Buddhist teachings being compromised. It is certainly not the prerogative of a priest to judge other people or impose Buddhist ethics on them, but it is their responsibility to educate, and to share the teachings, also when they are in tension with what the listeners want Buddhism to be.

Mizuko kuyo in relation to traditional Buddhism

While no mention of "mizuko' can be found in any sources of traditional Buddhism, the concept does draw on Buddhist ideas about rebirth according to karma. All Buddhists accept the doctrine of the absence of a permanent, unchanging self or soul, even if this only has little effect on ordinary language. This is because there never was any intention of denying that existence will continue from one life to the next. The "No Self' doctrine is meant only to assert that no existence in this world or another is permanent or unchanging. The mizuko kuyo also draws on indigenous Japanese ideas relating to ancestors becoming "kami' - ancestral protective spirits - when they are properly taken care of after their dead. Later in Japanese history, kami was identified with Buddhas, thus instituting the custom of posthumous declaring all dead family-members Buddhas to make sure that any unstable, dangerous spirits was pacified.

Japanese Buddhism is just as much Japanese as it is Buddhism, and while this has been the subject of many heated discussions among scholars and Buddhologists, it is generally not of much concern to the Japanese people who enjoys Buddhist ritual as part of their social life. Thus the connection between familiar Japanese rituals and traditional, mainstream Buddhism isn't very relevant to the practitioners of mizuko kuyo - or of Japanese Buddhism as a whole. Actually these practitioners rarely distinguish between Shinto and Buddhism, and even less between Buddhist sects. What is important is that the religious ritual strengthens the feeling of connectedness, and assures the believers that (1) they are accepted and respected members of society, and no abortion will change that, and (2) their prayers will bring them both spiritual and material benefits, regardless of the deities or buddhas the prayers are aimed at. "When one prays sincerely, isn't one's heart (kokoro) the same whether facing kami or Buddha?" (Kawano, p.25). Perhaps the mizuko kuyo can be viewed as, in William LaFleur's words; "the intellectual and cultural bridgework between early Buddhism's precept against killing and the conscience of the contemporary Japanese woman who has an abortion and still wishes [...] to think of herself as a "good' Buddhist" (LaFleur 1992, p.12). It is noteworthy how easily Japanese Buddhism incorporated mizuko kuyo into its practices. A religion with more emphasis on dogma would probably not have been able to do that, but with the Japanese emphasis on finding workable solutions through consensus, they have been able to incorporate seemingly conflicting views into one whole, and while the dogmatic authenticity is admittedly at times questionable, it has been functioning, with changes and additions, for around 1400 years now, which must indicate at least some degree of success.

Conclusion

According to Buddhism in both Theravadin countries, Tibet and Japan, any violation of the first precept is very serious indeed. Since Buddhism holds that life begins at conception, abortion is univocally seen as unskilful in all of the above traditions. However, Japanese Buddhism has managed, for better or worse, to incorporate two conflicting views; one advocating against abortion, and the other offering help and support to the woman who chooses to abort a child, and create a ritual reflecting both sets of values.

Many Buddhists all over the world have adopted a similar "pro-life, pro-choice' stance. They admit that terminating a pregnancy is murder and thus unskilful, but still maintain that women should be allowed the choice. This does however seem to be in tension with most Buddhist's readily acceptance of laws to discourage and punish murder under other circumstances. One of the following two seems implicit to this position; (1) murder is justifiable when it compromises another person's bodily autonomy, or (2) as long as we cannot see and touch a child, it is not really alive and thus not entitled to fundamental legal and moral rights.

In Denmark, and I suspect in most Western countries, abortion is now considered the only socially acceptable option in dealing with unwanted pregnancies. During the interview earlier mentioned with Helle Westergaard I learned that she, as part of an experiment, had contacted a number of doctors, asking about the possibility of putting a child up for adoption. Not one was able to give her any kind of useful advice or counselling, but all offered to refer her to the hospital for an abortion, even if she never mentioned the word. Somehow present-day society has arrived at a very unwholesome view; that abortion is a better and more acceptable choice than giving the great gift of life to both a child and its future adoptive parents.

A related problem is that we often neglect the emotional pain that follows an abortion. Perhaps because we all, deep down, know that it is unskilful to kill another human being, we have done all we can to hide the facts of what an abortion really is. When we talk about abortions, we emphasize only the woman's right to choose. We don't even refer to aborted children as "children', but resort to euphemisms; we de-humanise life in uterus to a point where it is reduced to "an abstract phenomena stripped of the living subject's spiritual and emotional workings' (Sonoda, 5). We don't allow for a woman to mourn her loss - because in doing so, we would also confirm that abortion involved a real loss, rather than just the relief to get rid of the unwanted pregnancy.

The mizuko kuyo is very popular in Japan, and its popularity is also growing in the West. I've been talking to two Western women who have had abortions, and (many years later) had the ritual performed. They both felt it very meaningful because of the healing and support offered. They also felt that in performing the ritual their loss was finally acknowledged, and they were helped to deal with their sense of sadness and remorse, while shown possible ways of sincere repentance.

I think a possible pitfall of the mizuko kuyo is that it can turn into a mindless, "easy' way of forgiving and forgetting - an integral part of the process of abortion, serving as a disguise of the unwholesomeness of taking life. If the ritual shall have any influence on the woman's karma, and her peace of mind, it must serve as a lesson, a way of creating awareness, so abortion never again is seen as a solution. Mizuko kuyo should not turn into a ritualized glossing over of a real problem - the current attitude to abortion - that urgently needs addressing.

According to Hardacre, the entire cult around the mizuko is built on fetocentrism and misogyny. Actually, the Buddhist attitude to abortion is built on fetocentrism; "the ideal of fetal personhood, the proposition that a fetus has the same moral value as a human being.' (Hardacre p.3). When fetocentric rhetoric "separates the -rights- of the fetus from those of the mother, positioning mother and fetus as antagonists' (ibid) that reflects Buddhist thought very well. From a Buddhist point of view it is true that "the question of abortion is basically a matter of a life of ease or a life of difficulty for the woman. It is a matter of life or death for the fetus' (Taniguchi, p.78). Further, from a Buddhist perspective, a mother's connection to a foetus maturing in her womb is not of the kind that allows her the right to take its life.

The misogyny Hardacre refers to is evident in the economic and emotional exploitation of women seen in certain specialized Japanese mizuko kuyo temples. It is however important to remember that the rite has been a mainly female concern for centuries before the commercialization in the 70th century, and that local family temples seem to emphasise counselling and/or long-term commitment (Martin + Brooks). However, while the grand set-up of commercial mizuko kuyo institutions are not likely to be emulated in the West, the underlying tendency to place the responsibility for unwanted pregnancies - and by extension, for all sexuality - solely on the women is a real danger, and something that must be dealt with.

There is no doubt that Buddhism doesn't support abortion, except in the cases where the pregnancy is known to jeopardize the mother's life. However, I don't think it is the responsibility of any practicing Buddhist, ordained or not, to condemn other people's choices. It is wise and recommendable to teach others the workings of karma and the respect for all life. It is important to help and support both mothers and children - born and unborn. And it is compassionate to take care of a woman who for some reason has felt the need to have an abortion.