Abortion

Question: Please talk about abortion. When does the soul join with the fetus? What significance does this have for abortion?

Aaron: Let us take these questions separately. First, when does the soul join the body? The soul may choose to join the body at any time. The decision to incarnate in that body has been made some time in advance. The actual joining may take place any time from the moments immediately after conception until those moments just before birth. Many factors govern this choice. For example, a soul which is a guide to another being may wish to use those nine months to continue its guidance before it assumes its own incarnation. On the other hand the joining may be made early, which allows the soul to be within the body and have an awareness of both planes, the spiritual and the physical, as the fetus grows. What is sometimes called the "veil of forgetting" does not occur until birth. The soul within the fetus is both aware of its true spiritual being and yet aware of the coming time of its birth and of its passage from the spiritual to the physical plane.

What does this mean in terms of abortion? Let me ask a question based on this? What is murder? Exactly what is occurring when one being kills another?

I am sure you are all aware that no being's essence can be destroyed. One may experience the inconvenience of loss of body, but the soul can not be damaged by physical force. Yet we would all agree that murder is wrong. When you violate the essence of another being you have damaged both yourself and the other being. This is obviously true in the case of murder. How can we connect that to abortion? How can something be nonharmful on one level and wrong an another?

You must first know that the soul will never willfully choose to enter a body which is going to be aborted when that soul has chosen life and a new incarnation. The soul has more wisdom than that, I assure you. The soul knows the plan for that body it has thought to enter. I can not say that a soul will never have entered a body that may be aborted, but it will not have entered such a body when it has made the decision to incarnate. Perhaps it has made such a decision in order to experience the fetal state, knowing that it will be terminated after some weeks. More likely in a body where an abortion is planned, the soul will not have entered. Is this then murder? What are you damaging? What is it that you are violating if no soul is present?

It is possible that you are violating a trust. The relationship of parent and child is never haphazard. The souls have planned this. With the help of their guides, they have chosen each other, while both were on the spiritual plane. If the person choosing the abortion had not made this choice, then a soul would have entered the body, and yet having chosen abortion, the soul has not entered the body. Clearly the action of the being thinking to incarnate into that fetus must be based on the choice of the would-be parent. So we may have here a situation where one being has agreed to be the parent of another being, and this has been planned before either being's birth. The being who had planned to be the parent becomes lost in misunderstandings on the physical plane. Fearful of its physical decision to parent, it decides to abort the fetus.

If a spirit had intended to inhabit that fetus, what is lost is that opportunity of physical life, with those parents and at that time, as it had planned. It differs in degree, not in substance from that act you call murder, where the spirit is already inhabiting a living body and the body is lost to that spirit. In this situation the soul that has lost the opportunity to incarnate because of another soul's decision to abort that fetus, must then plan again for its incarnation. What is lost here is time. Time and the planning and love that went into the original relationship. The lose of time is not crucial. You have all the time you need for your growth. What is crucial is the violation of love and trust in these souls' relationship to each other.

Any act of violence against another being, and abortion is certainly an act of violence, is damaging both to the recipient of the violence and the one who commits it. It is far more damaging to the being who commits that violence. Let us examine this.

The being who has planned the abortion has begun a life that it can not nurture and continue. This being is dwelling in separation from itself. The mind and soul cannot agree on this choice for pregnancy. The painful lesson of the abortion grows out of the discord between mind and spirit. The body allows the conception, disregarding that whisper from the soul that says "Not now." Then the physical being must face the trauma of the abortion.

I have been asked whether this is a sin? I would prefer to call it a mistake. If you did not make mistakes, if you had grown past any need to make mistakes, you would not need to be here on this physical plane. Mistakes are your tools of learning. But it is necessary that you learn from them.

Often you make the same mistakes repeatedly. This is certainly seen with women who frequently repeat this pattern of pregnancy and abortion. The question then becomes not whether that abortion is a sin or even wrong or harmful to the fetus, but what the being who is locked into that pattern must learn. The painful decision to abort the fetus is repeated over and over until the lesson is learned.

Abortion is not the only issue here. Please look at the question of children who are born to parents who cannot support them. What is the difference between aborting a fetus and allowing a child to be born who will starve within months? You say a parent living in such poverty may not have a choice, and that this is a problem of society. But I tell you that each of you always has a choice. You must learn to be increasingly responsible for your choices. This is maturity.

A similar question is raised by that being who chooses not to terminate the pregnancy although that being knows, deep within, that it is not ready to parent. After the child is born, perhaps it is abused or seriously neglected.

I ask you to regard the being who commits any violence against other beings with compassion. Do not justify it in any way and certainly do not condone it, but try to see how the perpetrator of that violence is locked into a pattern of misunderstanding. Ask how you can help that being find freedom from misunderstanding. Work as hard as you can to eliminate the social causes for violence, and know that each being, each life is sacred. At the same time, trust each soul's wisdom to make the choices it needs for its own growth, or to give in love to aid the growth of another, even if the path to that growth involves violence and pain.