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Question: Suicide and Abortion?

I would like to know your opinion about suicide. It's a very low act, but it is not like harming other creatures. After committing this act, after leaving the body and that particular unwanted life, where does the soul of the doer go? How about abortion? How about the soul that has already resided in the developing embryo?

K.L.
 

Answer: Ghost Life and Being Aborted

It is not a matter of opinion. According to the stringent laws of material nature if one commits suicide, in his next life he will not be granted a gross body. He will exist simply in a subtle body as a ghost. In other words, the karmic reaction for destroying his gross body is to not be granted another gross body in his next life.

If one is so frustrated and miserable that he wants to end his life, he should instead put an end to his miserable material life by taking to Krishna consciousness. In this way he will enter into an eternal, blissful life even while continuing in this body. And upon leaving his body, he will enter the spiritual world.

A soul who is aborted is undergoing the karmic reaction for having aborted a child in his previous life time. If he was responsible for multiple abortions, he will again and again appear in a mother's womb and be aborted for each of the abortions.

This is why we oppose abortion and recommend that those who do not want to take the responsibility of raising a child should completely restrain themselves from sex indulgence. The child enters the mother's womb at the moment of conception, and to kill a child at any stage of his development is greatly sinful. Therefore, instead of trying to find some happiness through some temporary sense pleasure such as sex, one should move up to a higher level of pleasure on the transcendental self-realization platform of Krishna consciousness, where life is eternal and full of unlimited bliss.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari