What happens to souls if they are denied birth?

[Juniper]

40 million abortions (world wide) per year is a terrible statistic.

From a spiritual aspect... What do you (collective, not individual) think happens to those souls that were going to inhabit the body of the aborted fetus? Go back into the birthing queue? I know my terminology probably sounds a bit off, but really... I'm curious. Genuinely curious what people think happens to souls that are suddenly denied their birth by this manner?

Edit: This is a split from an existing topic "Texas Illegally Passes a Law!"

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

From a spiritual aspect... What do you (collective, not individual) think happens to those souls that were going to inhabit the body of the aborted fetus? Go back into the birthing queue? I know my terminology probably sounds a bit off, but really... I'm curious. Genuinely curious what people think happens to souls that are suddenly denied their birth by this manner?

Uhm mm... My spiritual views are going to be different from most people's because I'm an Alchemist, and most people aren't

My view is that, when two thirds come together (1. Spirit, or 2. Soul, or 3. Body) the third is automatically generated.

An aborted fetus would consist of a body (clearly, or there would be nothing to abort), and a soul (in Alchemy, the... Uhm... Emotional feeling about the subject (that which ends up being aborted), but has not yet developed the spirit (the intellectual part of the entity).

The soul doesn't go anywhere because it never had a chance to develop. While this is most likely the opposite of the generally accepted idea that souls floats around looking for a body to inhabit, if you think about it for a moment, you'll see that this idea makes at least as much sense (if not more) as the more common idea.

[Diogenes]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

From a spiritual aspect... What do you (collective, not individual) think happens to those souls that were going to inhabit the body of the aborted fetus? Go back into the birthing queue? I know my terminology probably sounds a bit off, but really... I'm curious. Genuinely curious what people think happens to souls that are suddenly denied their birth by this manner?

All living beings deserve life as much as any other. I eat, I crap, and I don't particularly care about aborted fetuses.

[MaskedOne]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

From a spiritual aspect... What do you (collective, not individual) think happens to those souls that were going to inhabit the body of the aborted fetus? Go back into the birthing queue? I know my terminology probably sounds a bit off, but really... I'm curious. Genuinely curious what people think happens to souls that are suddenly denied their birth by this manner?

Depends on the sect. I think the Catholics will say that the LoH keeps the souls. Mainly based on
1) their belief that life is initiated at conception
2) pretty sure they don't allow for reincarnation, saying you only die once
3) they have allowances for those who were never exposed to the Gospel to achieve alternate salvation

end result= soul is placed at conception, life is ended before birth so definitely before exposure to the Gospel, LoH reaches in and goes "mine. come on home, kid"

Be aware that the above is pure conjecture, I've never really looked into their views on what happens to the souls of aborted children.

My personal view: haven't a clue, I generally avoid the topic of abortion and haven't considered the question before.

[WinterTraditions]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

Depends on the sect. I think the Catholics will say that the LoH keeps the souls. Mainly based on
1) their belief that life is initiated at conception
2) pretty sure they don't allow for reincarnation, saying you only die once
3) they have allowances for those who were never exposed to the Gospel to achieve alternate salvation

end result= soul is placed at conception, life is ended before birth so definitely before exposure to the Gospel, LoH reaches in and goes "mine. come on home, kid"

Be aware that the above is pure conjecture, I've never really looked into their views on what happens to the souls of aborted children.

My personal view: haven't a clue, I generally avoid the topic of abortion and haven't considered the question before.

Interestingly, I posed the same question to my grade 10 Christian Ethics teacher during our abortion unit. He said something along the lines of:

"Because the fetus was not exposed to the life God meant for them to have, the soul is 'transplanted' into another waiting body."

"We are created on Earth to experience God's master creation, which is the Earth and the Universe that holds it. If we are unable to experience it because of the misdeed of another person, God overlooks and hands our souls down to a new body."

[Juniper]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

All living beings deserve life as much as any other. I eat, I crap, and I don't particularly care about aborted fetuses.

I really don't think you understood my question.

Addendum:
As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to move my question into it's own topic. I think it's warranted that as I don't want to derail the thread.

[MaskedOne]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

Winter:
a workable position, I'm guessing based on limited thelogical data and half a conversation that I heard so I could be way off

[WinterTraditions]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

Winter:
a workable position, I'm guessing based on limited thelogical data and half a conversation that I heard so I could be way off

If only my memory was more..... Memorable. xD

[Diogenes]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

I really don't think you understood my question.

If there is a soul then there are a few options. None of them would make me care about whether people had abortions.
1) all living things have souls. I directly kill things and eat dead things. Big deal.
2) Only animals with consciousness have souls. Fetuses aren't conscious so it doesn't matter. Animal abuse is far more compelling.
3) Humans from the moment of conception have a soul. Unless it's me getting the abortion it doesn't matter.

[WinterTraditions]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

If there is a soul then there are a few options. None of them would make me care about whether people had abortions.
1) all living things have souls. I directly kill things and eat dead things. Big deal.
2) Only animals with consciousness have souls. Fetuses aren't conscious so it doesn't matter. Animal abuse is far more compelling.
3) Humans from the moment of conception have a soul. Unless it's me getting the abortion it doesn't matter.

You totally just contradicted yourself there. Fetuses are human and come after conception, so they have a soul... Yet according to your opinion of them not having consciousness, they don't have one?

Which one is it? Soul or no soul? (Oh goodness. I can feel the ginger jokes taking root.)

[Diogenes]

Re: Texas Illegally Passes a Law!

You totally just contradicted yourself there. Fetuses are human and come after conception, so they have a soul... Yet according to your opinion of them not having consciousness, they don't have one?

Which one is it? Soul or no soul? (Oh goodness. I can feel the ginger jokes taking root.)

I don't care if they have a soul. Ethics is meaningless. Have an abortion if you want. I'll have one if it suits me and I won't if it doesn't. My point was only that regardless of what the truth of the matter on the whole soul business is, abortion is a-okay with me.

[Juniper]

Re: What happens to souls if they are denied birth?

As an aside, I split my question into it's own topic so it is no longer part of the Texas Illegal Law Passing thread.

I don't care if they have a soul. Ethics is meaningless. Have an abortion if you want. I'll have one if it suits me and I won't if it doesn't. My point was only that regardless of what the truth of the matter on the whole soul business is, abortion is a-okay with me.

Either I am misunderstanding the point you are trying to make or you are still not understanding my question. What I am asking is what you think happens to the soul when it is denied the birth... not whether you are or aren't going to have an abortion or think it is or isn't ok for others to have one.

[ChainLightning]

Re: What happens to souls if they are denied birth?

I just simply don't think there *is* one, at that point.

I know that a soul is intangible. We sure can't dissect someone to find their soul. We don't even have a biological or physiological, anyway, place in our bodies for one to be found, or located.

I know that there is something more to us than just some atomic structure and fiddlybits in the right places.

That leaves a heck of a lot of room for conjecture and logic to play around.

Maybe the soul dispensary was pre-aware of the abortion, so the fetus never had a soul installed. Maybe the soul develops at birth, or possibly even after, so the fetus was never in line to get a soul. Maybe, like B. said, it just wasn't up to that stage, yet, where one becomes two, and two becomes three. Maybe what we think of as a soul is actually the spirit, the *will* of life, of nature, and as such doesn't reside in an individual but, rather, the individual is simply a representation, an effigy, of that spirit.


Whatever the case may be, I just don't think a soul is part of that stage of gestation, at all. I feel there's too many things to suggest otherwise.

[PsykhikosAnarchosNautikos]

Re: What happens to souls if they are denied birth?

I think the spirit and soul are separate entities. I like to think of the soul as the connection to a higher or just bigger and eternal source- the soul kind of acts like the intermediary between the big picture and your ego self. Your spirit is that spark of sense of self and the internal freedom to express it. This is where the mind comes in as a different thing as well as it is self consciousness. The mind observes and thinks of actions to take and words to say, the spirit puts those thoughts into action and inspires one to say their words- the soul is that connection with your outside environment and how it makes you feel and gives your mind something to think about and your spirit something to bring about.

I think the mind remembers the experience of being aborted, the spirit never has a chance to surface (first breath) and the soul remains intact with the mind and Big Mamma Bear, but sadly the body has to die- seems like such a waste of a perfectly good existence.

I am for abortion for the right reasons, but only as a very last resort or the parents are drug addicts and the drugs have already taken effect on the fetus. Sometimes I think there are too many people on this planet, or we're too close together, but I still value life above all else.

[Ophidia]

Re: What happens to souls if they are denied birth?

In my cosmology, a person gets a soul with their first breath. This is an amalgamation of various cosmologies I've been exposed to - the African Diaspora, Alexandrian Wicca, and indigenous American, to name a few. If a fetus never breathes the air of the outside world, it never gets a soul. That's pretty much my stance on it. No first breath, no soul. Some of what I've heard says the soul chooses the potential child and parents, others have said it's pretty much a crapshoot. Waiting souls tend to gather around pregnant women - it's a spiritually powerful and vulnerable state for a woman to be in, and kind of creepy at the same time.

To elaborate a little, mainly because I imagine some people might be curious and because I think it's cool that there is an actual protocol for it - in Vodou, souls come from our ancestors. Family ties are extremely important in Vodou & among the African Diaspora religions. Every new person on earth has been here before. If a Vodouisant needs or wants to have an abortion, an ancestor may have already chosen that potential child as a new home, so there are various rituals and ceremonies that might be performed to help 'rehome' the ancestor, as well as stave off any hurt feelings among the familial spirits and their associated lwa. In many of the African Diaspora religions and native African cultures, many divinations and consultations are made with the priests and priestesses before a decision of this magnitude is undertaken, mainly to find out which ancestor wants to come back & to see if they are willing to wait for a more fortunate time to be reincarnated. A common occurrence within the African and island cultures is that there are a lot of miscarriages or 'spontaneous abortions' after it's determined the ancestor is patient and no spirits are angered - whether that's because a subsequent abortion is reported as a miscarriage, or maybe some 'healing' offered by the local priest/ess, I can't say for certain.