What is the Eternal Destiny of the Unborn Who are Aborted?

 With all these Christians in America screaming about the rights of the unborn, I think a very logical question to ask is what is the eternal destiny of a fetus if it is aborted.  But we can also ask what is the eternal destiny of a fetus after a natural miscarriage.  Christianity has had four options to deal with this difficult question.

Option 1 The Original Sin option – By far the most common approach is that of original sin.  The doctrine of original sin states that because of the sin of Adam and Eve, we inherit their sinful condition.  We are born sinners and are therefore destined for damnation.  This explains why the Roman Catholic Church is so passionate on this issue.  If a fetus is aborted, or there is a miscarriage, or If the child is born, but dies before it is baptized, it is going to hell.  A number of Protestants have this view as well including Pentecostals and Southern Baptists.  Many rank & file members may have no idea of this though and I’ll deal with that in other options.  Because of the doctrine of original sin, most of us are going to hell because even if we do manage to get born, chances of us being born in a Christian home are less than 50/50, and then there is the problem of automatically being sinful, which means there is a 100% chance I will sin and be condemned to hell.  Only 31.2% of the world population is Christian so as soon as I exit the womb, there is a 69% chance I will burn in hell.  Of those 31% who are Christians, many of them are not truly Christian according to Christians themselves.  They are either apostate, heretical, or insincere.  For the sake of simplicity, let us assume about half of those who call themselves Christian are not truly Christian.  Fundamentalists would put this percentage much lower but let us be generous.  This means there is roughly an 85% likelihood someone who is bornwill wind up in hell.  If a fetus is aborted, though, there is a 100% chance it will wind up in hell.  May I humbly suggest that if you believe in the doctrine of original sin, you cannot also believe in a loving God, so you might want to examine this more closely.  You might think from the above that The Roman Catholic Church has been fiercely against abortion for its entire history.  The doctrine of original sin is a little more nuanced though, because it only applies to when a fetus is infused with a human soul.  Debate has been fairly constant on this question, so much so, that for about 600 years of Roman Catholic history, abortion of a fetus was not considered murder so long as it occurred prior to a soul entering it.

Option 2 Limbo – Some people believed the idea of original sin as expressed above was too extreme.  What if a person had no opportunity to know about God such as, say, a 6^th century BCE Chinese farmer.  Or, what about a baby who never had the chance to actually sin, even though it has a sinful nature.  The  church came up with Limbo.  I was taught this as a Catholic child and my mother and I had many discussions about this.  Limbo is not paradise, so the souls who wind up there will never experience everlasting bliss.  But neither will they experience everlasting hell.  Instead they have a pretty OK existence in which there is no real suffering, but there is no bliss.  In a word, it’s not bad.  One form of the Limbo doctrine, held by my SDA church, is there is no such thing but people in this situation will be forever unaware of anything.  They will be asleep and not know anything.  Now I must ask this simple question.  If I allow a baby to get born, and it only has a 15% chance of making it to heaven (and I’m being generous) but an 85% chance of burning in hell, and I set this against a 100% chance of having an OK existence in Limbo or in forever sleep, which would you choose?  Logic tells you to go for the 100% safe option.  Thus, if a fetus is aborted, what is the big deal?

 Option 3 the according to the light they have option – This view is based largely on Romans 2.  It states there is no Limbo.  Instead, God judges according to the light they had.  So our 6^th century BCE Chinese farmer will go to heaven or hell depending on how good that person was based on his set of beliefs.  Most modern Christians who hold this view today believe that a baby who dies had no light so God cannot condemn them.  We tend to lean toward mercy today whereas our Medieval ancestors leaned toward hell.  Many modern Christians are either unaware of, or uncaring about, the nuances of the doctrine of original sin.  Some believe it depends on the parents.  So if you are good Christians aborting your unborn is the best thing you can do for it because you have just punched a ticket to heaven for your unborn child.  Likewise, if you think God must show mercy to the unborn because they never had a Chance, then abortion is what you should do because you give your unborn a 100% chance of heaven.  Can you see how twisted things can get?

 Option 4 Reincarnation – Up to 50% of modern Christians believe in reincarnation and most people would be staggered to know how influential reincarnation was in the early church.  Jesus himself may have believed in it but I won’t debate that here.  What we now know is Buddhism and Buddhist ideas played a massive role in the early church, far more than we knew previously.  It is even quite possible that Christian monasticism was inherited from Buddhism.  A number of prominent church fathers believed in reincarnation.  If you believe in reincarnation, then an aborted fetus will reappear as someone else down the line without incurring any karma as a result of this round.  So again, what’s the problem?  It is true that those who believe in reincarnation and karma believe that tramatic memories carry on from one life to the next, so the unborn may have an emotional memory of being aborted.  Hinduism is generally against abortion because of its idea we should do no harm.  However, Hinduism also believes that a warrior must do his duty and that if he kills another in the course of his darma (duty) he incurs no bad karma, and the one killed will get another round anyway, so death is not seen as that catastrophic.  I point this out to show there are some contradictory beliefs even with reincarnation.  I think logic tells you that if a fetus is generally unaware of much, any karmic harm would be minimal.  At any rate, karma is seen as something which, if understood, provides us with an opportunity for improvement.  Logic would tell you then, that this really isn’t that big of a deal at least for the fetus.  How much bad karma one gets for actually aborting may be another matter.  But here again, it depends on the circumstances.  If I am a mother with five hungry children and I know that this next one will cause one or more of the other five to suffer or die from hunger, I have a duty to those five children, and so bad karma comes about from me not performing my duty toward those five children.

 

Humans have a natural reaction against murder and it is well we have such a reaction.  When we look at things theologically, however, we run into logical difficulties.  Many Christians believe their way is the only way and has been the only way since the church began.  I think it is important for Christians to look at their beliefs and how logical they really are, and whether a loving God fits into those beliefs.  I believe such an examination will yield some surprising results for many Christians.