Posted by Roberta Grimes • August 13, 2015 • 25 Comments
Afterlife Research, Human Nature, Slavery, Understanding Reality
Long before I knew that my primary spirit guide had once been Thomas 
Jefferson, I loved the man. My 1993 Doubleday novel, My Thomas, was written from the adoring viewpoint of his wife. And before I could write so tenderly about someone who had been a slaveholder, I had to do research and satisfy myself that Thomas Jefferson had not been a monster. Like you and me today, he only had had the misfortune of being born into a perverted culture.
Jefferson and his wife inherited hundreds of slaves. He couldn’t legally free them in Virginia, nor could he free them anywhere on the North American continent without dooming them to lives of misery. He came to feel that he couldn’t do anything but try to keep them safe and happy, and this he did, always hoping that a solution would be found to what he saw as a monstrous institution. There is evidence that if Martha Jefferson had lived, her husband would have retired from politics after the American Revolution and devoted his life to the cause of abolition. But Martha died in 1782. The rest, as they say, is history. And despite all the good that Thomas Jefferson did for this country in a lifetime of service, the single fact that he inherited slaves and he never found a way to end slavery is sufficient reason for the Democratic Parties of many states to decide this year, nearly a quarter-millennium later, to ban him from their annual dinners.
For Thomas Jefferson, slavery was roughly akin to what abortion is for you and me. Whether we are for it or against it, the legal right to abortion on demand is a part of our culture. As a culture, we accept the belief that a woman’s right to use her own body is more important than is a lesser life-form’s right to continue to exist. Just as, two hundred years ago, slaveholders’ property rights came before whatever rights their property might have wanted to claim. The analogy may not be perfect. But it is good enough to make me wince. How will our accepting easy abortion as a fact of life today make you and me appear to our distant descendants?
What we now think of as just the afterlife, a side niche perhaps, not very important, will soon be as much of a concrete but distant presence in each of our lives as Newark. Within a decade or two, there will be easy electronic communication with those we used to think were dead. Then living researchers will be able to quiz the dead about a lot of things, the whole topic of abortion among them. Even knowing what we already know, I shudder to think what more the dead might tell us. So far, this is what we can demonstrate is true:
As was true of slavery, the question of abortion requires that we balance the rights of the strong against the rights of the weak. In Thomas Jefferson’s day it was obvious that protecting property rights was a core social good. Today it is just as obvious that women have the right to destroy their sub-viable fetuses. But what is acceptable in any culture always is a moving target. A wealthy Minneapolis dentist has long enjoyed the until-now-acceptable sport of big-game hunting. But in July he unwittingly killed a beloved lion, and thereby he destroyed his own life. Dr. Palmer’s travails are less about Cecil the Lion than they are about the fact that our culture had been shifting, and he had paid insufficient attention. What always has been acceptable – the brisk and manly sport of big-game hunting – is coming to seem to most of us now to be an outright barbarity.
This is what so often happens! Eventually it comes to be seen that the rights of the strong – whether property, sport, or avoiding nine months of inconvenience – when they are put on a balance scale are not as valuable to the strong as are the rights of the weak to their very lives. When eventually that balance scale is used, favoring the rights of the strong over those of the weak is seen by everyone to always have been such an obvious barbarity that those who hundreds of years ago were unable to see its barbarism must even then have been morally bankrupt. As Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr., said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
I am taking no political position here. I still think that allowing first-trimester abortion is preferable to driving desperate women into back-alleys. But I also am becoming uncomfortably certain that two hundred years into the future I will join everyone who reads these words in being condemned for our having been alive in the United States at a time when at least a million abortions occur every year. Fifty-eight million abortions since Roe v. Wade. And almost 17.5 million of the babies aborted since Roe v. Wade were African-American.
I don’t know how to square this circle. I only know that history shows that Dr. King was exactly right. And forcing ourselves to look at this problem, recognizing it for the problem that it is, is our first step toward coming together in love and beginning to build a more just world.
Hi Roberta,
I love reading from you. I also listen to your podcast.
I am against abortion. However, I do find it really hard for a young woman to keep a baby that is product of a rape.
How would you comment in a case like that?
Thank you!
Oh Lindi, you have asked such a great question! It goes to the heart of what the evidence tells us is why we enter earth-lives at all. As you know, we plan lives here only as a way to better grow spiritually. Being here is tough duty! There is nothing that would entice us to leave the perfection that is our true home and go through all of this except the promise that if we handle well the tough earth-lessons that we ourselves have planned, then we can advance to higher vibratory levels upon our return. Growing spiritually is very difficult there, while here there is so much going on to strengthen our spiritual muscles that tremendous growth is possible for us.
So the evidence is strong that nearly everything that ever happens in our lives on earth is an opportunity to learn better love and forgiveness; and the evidence is strong, too, that we ourselves planned all the biggest negative events. From the perspective of our eternal lives, even what we on earth might see as the greatest calamities of all look like just more chances to better strengthen our abilities to love and forgive.
When it is viewed this way, a rape that produces a pregnancy is a hum-dinger of a spiritual growth opportunity! Look at what a great package it is. We have the rapist to forgive and to love as a beautiful part of eternal Mind; and we have the child to grow within our own body and lovingly give the chance to see life. We can then give up the child for adoption. Or, if we are really trying to get to the Sixth Level in one shot, we can perfectly love and forgive that child for the entire rest of our lives.
I recall once seeing an extraordinarily beautiful young woman interviewed. She was some sort of beauty pageant winner, and she told us that she had been the product of a rape. Her mother had been a rising executive, someone with a glorious future in a late-eighties go-go career. Then she had been raped. She had borne and treasured that innocent child, had abandoned her fast-track career, had not even ever dated again, but had devoted her life to rearing and educating and preparing for the best possible life a daughter of whom anybody would be proud.
Now, true, some of this story is troubling. Why couldn’t the mother have continued her career, dated and married, found balance in her life? But our place is not to judge how others manage their spiritual-growth opportunities. From the perspective of eternal life, here was a woman who could have tripped herself into the nearest Planned Parenthood facility and then gone right on without a thought. But she put love and forgiveness first. It is hard not to say that she Aced that lesson! And just recalling her beautiful, intelligent, sweet and lovely daughter, it has been hard for me since I saw that interview to imagine why anyone would abort the child of a rape, or even give that child away. Some gifts are difficult to receive, but they are nevertheless gifts all the same!
hi Roberta,
I believe, as Bill Clinton said, that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”
On a related note, I’m very curious as to your stance on eating animals. As an ethical vegan, I believe we should respect the lives of ALL sentient creatures. To my mind, pro-life activists lose credibility when they limit their circle of compassion to not-yet-born humans. It is not in anyone’s best interest to be living such a sad contradiction.
Very interesting information about Jefferson–I did not realize he was an abolitionist at heart, and that his wife’s death steered him back into politics.
Sincerely,
Camille
Hello Camille! Thomas Jefferson certainly was an abolitionist in his early life – it’s all there in his writings. Indeed, he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that everyone is entitled “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rather than referring to property – which would have been the standard construction – so as not to give comfort to slaveholders. And thanks to TJ, Virginia was the first place on earth to ban the importation of slaves. I think the year was 1778. Everything he says in my novel, My Thomas (other than the lover’s talk), comes from his contemporary writings. And that novel includes the sense I had when I was researching it: I think that Patty was to some extent an engine of his abolitionist fervor. (Every Virginia gentlewoman of the day seems to have been named Martha, and nicknamed either Patty or Patsy.) Jefferson meant to leave public life once he cleared his name. There were issues raised about some of his decisions made as war governor of Virginia, but once he had straightened those out, he happily meant to retire to his family, his farm, and his books (as he put it). He already had been thinking through how he would persuade people that whites and free blacks could live amicably together. But then Patty died, and Thomas couldn’t stand to be anywhere near Monticello. He went to France to help to negotiate the peace, and then he went back into politics. Theirs had been an epic love story! He never married again, never took a lover to the extent that I have been able to determine (this especially includes Sally Hemings – that story was a nonsensical political lie, but it is so delicious that it is told as truth to this day). In his old age, Jefferson referred to his ten-year marriage – which spanned the Revolutionary War – as “ten years of unchequered happiness.” Given the chaos and stress and danger of those ten years, we have got to believe that was one heck of a marriage!
With regard to my stance on eating animals, it is considerably complicated by the fact that long ago I read The Secret Life of Plants. It turns out that plants also have a fairly complicated nervous system, and are “sentient” to an extent that few people realize! The primary difference between a cow and a carrot may be that the cow can tell you that it feels pain, while the carrot cannot. This realization gave me trouble for years. Eventually I got to the point where I was able to cut up my peach this morning, but to this day I cannot grate or eat an uncooked carrot. I cannot do it.
I actually prefer to eat vegetarian. COOKED vegetarian. But (a) I find that I feel less well after awhile if I don’t eat any meat at all; (b) my husband does our cooking, and he likes meat; and (c) I didn’t like the sense of superior self-righteousness that being a vegetarian instilled in me. Our compromise has been to have mostly vegetarian meals, and for meat to eat only grass-fed local beef, and eggs from hens that live on grass. Not only are the eggs and beef better, but my husband has actually visited the ranches: we know that these animals have lived happy lives.
I really didn’t intend this to be a political post. But since you have mentioned politics, I will just say that we all understand that “safe, legal, and rare” sounds good and makes us all feel better, but it means nothing. What we do not prohibit always will be carried to its extreme by those who feel entitled to do that. The real issue with abortion – as it was with slavery, and as it is with big-game hunting and other things where rights are put at odds with one another – is that it pits the rights of two different classes of creatures against one another. One wins 100%, or else the other does! And what might seem to us today to be the right way to balance those competing rights will not necessarily be seen the same way tomorrow. What is more, because in each case the rights of the weaker individuals are more fundamental (the right to freedom, or even to life itself), it is common once society’s values shift for those who favored the rights of the strong to be judged by history quite harshly.
Thank you for commenting, dear Camille, and for giving me the chance to say these things!
Roberta, this is another very well written blog and probably your most challenging.
I certainly don’t advocate abortion, as such, but I’m around your age and we can both remember the horrors of illegal abortions experienced by many women before Roe vs Wade. I worked briefly in a hospital when abortion was illegal in California and elsewhere, and it was common knowledge that the rich would admit their wives or daughters with unwanted pregnancies to have a C & T on their uterus, in effect an abortion in a clean, sterile environment. The middle class and poor, if they wanted an abortion, would have a back alley one, or go down to Mexico. Lots of botched abortions and serious health problems developed.
If abortions were completely outlawed in the U.S., abortions would not stop, only go underground into an illegal, unsupervised market.
Also, I find it contradictory that most of the people that are virulent anti-abortion, don’t seem to give a hoot in a barnyard once the fetus is born and is a baby, if it’s born to a poor woman or couple. They want to cut and/or eliminate food stamps and all manner of social welfare programs. I don’t think you can say that it will be good spiritually for the babies and parents if they’re dirt poor and even living on the street. As you well know, Jesus teaches us many times in the first three gospels, and in Matthew 2 at length, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and help the needy. In fact, he tells his disciples that that is the path to heaven.
It’s been pointed out recently, in the current public debate, that abortions were quite common in the Roman society that Jesus lived in, yet he doesn’t once mention them, nor condemn them. Not in the four main gospels or the “lost gospels.” I even read where one biblical scholar said that abortion is not condemned in either the old or new testament.
As for Planned Parenthood, only about 3% of what they do is abortions, and no Federal or State money is involved in that. It’s against the law. They mostly provide women’s health services in other areas, like family planing, cancer screening, and so forth. Those videos were highly doctored. It’s legal to donate fetal tissue for research and receive only remuneration for transfer and storage fees.
You’re the expert on the afterlife, Roberta, but from what I’ve read, the soul has not entered the body during the early months. It’s a thorny issue as to if the soul knows and had planned the abortion and if the woman planned the abortion before she was born. I tend to feel that not every challenge is pre-planned. There is the element of some unplanned challenges suddenly coming into our lives, just to keep us “on-our-toes” and add variety to our lives.
The afterlife research of Dr. Michael Newton tells us that there are billions of inhabited planets out there, some more advanced than Earth, some about the same, some less. We’re free to choose to incarnate on one of those and the Soul whose prospective fetus was aborted, certainly could go elsewhere if they were ready for another “material” existence. But, why not hangout in whatever realm of the afterlife a soul is on for awhile longer? After all, we have “all the time in the universe and beyond.”
I don’t have all the answers , but have to say that I feel an abortion should be between the woman, her doctor, her spouse or boyfriend(if they’re still around) and a spiritual counselor of her choice. At least for now.
I agree with you about wild game hunting and diet. If people are going to eat meat and eggs they should choose grass feed, free range, no hormones and antibiotics beef and the same with chickens and organic eggs,
Best always
Dear Michael, I dispute nothing that you say. Again, this post is apolitical. My entire point is that in every abortion situation – just as in each instance of slavery and in each instance of big-game hunting – there are two beings involved, one strong and one weak. Each has an interest that is important to it. And in each instance, the interest of the strong party (property, sport, avoiding pregnancy) is important enough that it has been – or is – considered by a majority of the members of a whole society to be more important than the interests of the weak to life or to liberty.
To me, that is a fascinating moral problem! And it is made more compelling by the fact that in two of the three situations – slavery and big-game hunting – we have seen public opinion turn from supportive to strongly against the interests of the strong party. Will that happen in the case of abortion as well? I think the arc of history suggests that it may well happen. Not in our lifetimes, but – as happened with Jefferson – long after our deaths, when you and I won’t be there to argue why, today, abortion seems to be the better and more compassionate choice.
This is my entire point. What seems to you and me to be morally right may not always seem to be so. And in those hard moral choices lies important spiritual learning and growth!
AAHHHH, another round of “Compulsory Pregnancy” dictating the life consequences of another young woman…. -and just who’s gonna make these life altering and devastating decisions instead of the woman, who is, after all, the original body’s decision maker and original occupant!
Why does this very political idea rear it’s very ugly and divisive head in such a spiritual blog site?
-Could it be that instead of creating the change from excess abortion to much needed conversations around -easy access to birth control… it’s just another form of lazy man’s out?
Please re-check your motives on this idea as interfering in this concept as two separated, private (meaning…-it’s not your choice involved here) individual soul’s ideas of a untimely/unwanted life altering plan… to instead, of one of becoming a wise counsellor who simply persuades and guides these two very intimate and private souls to THEIR OWN PROPER LIFE CHOICES … —NOT —simply –YOUR own ideas of what is right for THEM and this certain untoward and very unwanted predicament.
-And mostly, remember every child a WANTED CHILD,— NOT every child a hated/discarded child!
??Are you personally adopting every unwanted child, or tirelessly contributing the role “honorary auntie/financial provider” adopter of these unwanted pregnancy/and spiritually impolite birth interlopers?
Let’s not forget that spiritually, the afterlife yields many different types of soul, evolutionally disadvantaged, and ill meaning, as well as well meaning, and pretty evolved. Let’s not play god here and as biological outsiders, pretend that we each have JUST AS MUCH SAY_SO in the lives of others as ONLY we ALONE can decide for ourselves what is the best and PROPER LIFE CHOICE for us.
I would get PRETTY upset if some else decided in my stead to force me to donate a kidney in the better interest of helping out a kidney challenged individual! Until you personally can happily be OK with government forcing you to donate a kidney, or forcibly extracting your blood for blood-banks against your will and against your wishes, then I will continue to stand with the idea of personal bodily sovereignty!
Again, to hone it a bit more simply in order for you to conceptualize… if a hijacker entered your home or automobile… do you have the right to evict him/her??? or do you must simply let them have full access and rights to your home and or property first?
If, as you say, the god-thingy is mostly in charge of people’s lives, then where do you get off telling the compulsory pregnancy violation is the most honorable choice here? did you decide for the woman? And JUST
HOW MUCH are you willing to do to champion the PREVENTION of a undesired pregnancy via FREE and unblocked access to ALL proper, and private forms of birth control to date?
RU486??? or RU against it?
So there! dammit. 🙁
Dear Pharfel, I have approved your hatred-filled comment reluctantly. It is obvious that you did not read my blog post, or you could not have written as you did. I am not against abortion. My post was emphatically NOT political, and anyway this is not about my own beliefs at all. Rather, it is about how changing cultural mores can in hindsight paint with a very different brush the decisions that we make today. I believe this is something that we as a society should begin to think about. If you prefer that we not consider the future, then you and I disagree on this point. About the issue of abortion today, we do NOT disagree. What I take heated exception to, though, is your visceral and obnoxious hatred of anyone who doesn’t precisely parrot your positions.
Dear beloved friend, YOUR ATTITUDE IS AT THE VERY CORE OF OUR PROBLEM AS A SOCIETY. Until you and those like you begin to understand that imposing a set of imagined views on others and then vilifying them for those views is the very essence of what is wrong today – and is indeed the very antithesis of spiritual growth – then we as a species are going nowhere. You caused the problem, dear sir or madam, just as surely as the religious zealots have caused the problem! And apparently you fail to appreciate the fact that there are people who share neither your kind of hatred nor the hatred of the religious zealots. There are people who look at you – and look at them – with only love and an outstretched hand.
Spiritual growth requires that we learn to love perfectly and learn to forgive completely. And we must learn those essential lessons in the real world, dear friend. Your spewing such hatred helps no one to understand your views on anything, but instead it makes it just a little bit harder for any of us to grow at all.
Wow, -just wow…. I had absolutely NO HATRED in my post here, yet you misinterpreted it as so.
I am a bit confused… just how does one speak these truths to power, and yet not get called as “Hate’Speech?
Maybe if i did not use all capitol letters? or possibly no hyperbole??
-just say’n.
The opinion of ‘it’s OK to interfere with another’s biological life choices should NEVER be considered as a realm of public domain. Even pretty sure GOD herself would not desire to take that stance in people’s lives.
If god was so against abortion…then why does the “spontaneous miscarriage/abortion” EVER appear in our lives?
But thanks, for being so noble as to rise above your imagined belief that I intended to direct any “Hate” toward this posting.
Would Jesus be accused of a “Hate-thought-crime” in this day and age if he tossed the money changers out of the temple recently?
-just say’n.
-“Nough said.”
-Done.
My dear friend, thank you for responding. I think that everyone who reads our exchange very well understands your views, and in the world of 2015 your views concerning abortion are in the majority. As are mine. As were Thomas Jefferson’s views on slavery in 1775, and our murderous dentist friend’s views on big-game hunting in 2005. Kumbaya.
My post was not about abortion at all. It was about how society’s mores can rather dramatically change over time. And when there are two parties with competing interests – one strong and one weak – I simply note that the tide of history is toward eventually taking the position of the weaker party. That’s it. Supporting my worry that we will be judged harshly is the fact that so many abortions have occurred that it has become a kind of birth control (yes, as you point out, the extensive use of free morning-after pills would be a FAR better alternative!). Unfortunately, too, when it comes to the way that history may well judge us, a hugely disproportionate number of those aborted have been black people’s children, so abortion has become what history may call a form of eugenics. Its close association with Margaret Sanger does not help! Nobody bothers to ask Thomas Jefferson now why he felt he had no choice but to keep his slaves, nor does anyone ask the dentist now how he ever could have found fun in murdering big game. Once society turns against a historical opinion, it turns HARD. And it judges harshly.
That impulse to judge past moral views would be as bad for the spiritual growth of future populations as is your impulse today to judge people who may not perfectly espouse your own views. I wish there were a way to spare them that impulse.
Dear Pharfel, you ask how you could have expressed your views in a strong way that nevertheless did not come across as hate-filled? Both of my dear friends above, Camille and Michael, did an excellent job of that! It’s not just their lack of capital letters. But rather, it is their patiently making a positive and thoughtful case for their positions, and their not making assumptions that if I disagree with them on something I must automatically be evil. It is especially their not assuming that I must be a religious nut who espouses the whole panoply of religious-nut views. They handled this situation perfectly.
Dear friend, we all welcome you as a commenter here. We ask only that you not bring this country’s poisonous political atmosphere into what you recognize to be a blog that tries hard to explore all the implications of spiritual growth, and even the more problematic ones (of which there are many). I will from time to time say things that are meant to challenge you, to stretch you a bit and to get you to broaden your thinking in ways that may be a bit uncomfortable. But everything that I say here comes from a heart full of love for you in particular, and with the earnest desire to help you as much as I can to achieve the Sixth Level in one lifetime!
I’m sending you a hug. I hope you can feel it.
Whew, this abortion topic is thorny and can be real cantankerous!
You’re right, Roberta, about the future of morality and abortion.One thing, with the very possible development of more reliable, safe and easily used contraception methods and devices, the need for abortion could be practically eliminated. In the distant future, of course. We’ll see.
But, with the Transhumanism movement(which I oppose) and all the genetic engineering going on, natural conception in a uterus and delivery may become obsolete at some point. I read somewhere recently that some “mad scientists” are trying to build an artificial uterus.
I wonder what some of our afterlife communicators have to say on all this?
Hello dear Michael! It’s a thorny topic, indeed, and made much worse by the irrational political battles surrounding it.
I have just now been Skyping with my wonderful friend, Gary Schwartz, who is one of the scientists working on direct electronic communication – the “soul phone” – with some success. The teams of dead experts seem to feel that we will have a good prototype within another couple of years, and something commercial in 5-10 years. When that happens, I think that in this field, as in a number of others, it will be a game-changer:
1) It will soon become widely known here that even first-trimester aborted fetuses grow up in the afterlife. There is no discernible difference between a miscarriage and an abortion where this process is concerned.
2) Those who now think of abortion as an acceptable and strings-free form of birth control will decline in number, it seems to me. It’s one thing to have the abortion and put it all behind you, but it’s quite another to know that you will be meeting your aborted fetus in the afterlife as a young adult! Reportedly they all have forgiven their mothers, and they love their mothers. But as I try to put myself into the unwanted-pregnancy situation, I think that for me, anyway, this knowing that they still will grow up and we’ll get to meet them later feels like a game-changer.
Better access to contraception really is the answer! Even if abortion is legal, it’s a health risk and a big deal. If you can just take a morning-after pill and prevent implantation, then you spare yourself all of that, (But will even the unimplanted zygote grow up in the afterlife? Oy – I hope not!).
This is exciting news, Roberta, from Dr. Schwartz concerning the “soul phone.” I’m a big fan of his.
I’m sure you’ll keep us informed of all future developments.
I love Gary Schwartz! Such a pure spirit and such a wonderfully complex and questing mind. Every time we Skype – which isn’t nearly often enough – it feels like an epic event full of breakthrough insights.
I have another close friend, too, who is heading up the living team which is working on what is called the North American Station – they’re using computers, and they’re only a few years behind the same effort in Brazil that is now becoming quite successful. Both Craig and Gary have major dead physicists working with them now. I just love being a fly on the wall while all of this is going on! And yes, of course I’ll talk about developments as they happen – expect it to take another couple of years or thereabouts before things are nailed down. It’s very difficult to get these lines opened, but the dead teams insist that this time they have the worst bugs figured out and they WILL succeed.
Roberta ..I mistakenly clicked ‘unsubscribe’ but I want to stay subscribed. I enjoy your books that I ordered. JB
Hello Joan! I’m glad that you’re enjoying the books, and please let me know if you ever have questions. I have just sent you an email as well – please simply re-subscribe, and we will be back in correspondence!
Oh Roberta i so love your mind,emotion & will…. your intellect also is quite keen. I,m am so happy that i found you! God Bless you sister! Jesus is Lord!
Thank you, dear Jeffrey! I’m glad that you’re here as well, and Jesus certainly is Lord. I see the rest of my life as devoted to helping Him share His truth. As you love Him, I hope that you will join me!
I don’t know what I think here. On one hand, a 13 year-old girl who gets pregnant by her boyfriend simply made a mistake that, for better worse, can be remedied. Even if the “consequences” include that upon her death, she learns that her abortion resulted in a child that her existing belief system could not accept, it will be a surprise (for sure), but the next world seems to be filled with surprises.
While we’re here on earth, we makes decisions based upon what we believe or know. It’s limited, of course, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up abortion rights, even if these aborted fetuses live on. What about the here-and-now?
Hello Mark! You’re right, of course, that it’s hard for a child who makes a mistake to have to go through a pregnancy. As we used to say in law school, “hard cases make bad law.” Perhaps your gender makes it more difficult for you to empathize with that same girl when she dies in her old age and is then greeted with joy by a beautiful young person who loves her and calls her “Mom.” Dear, that is not just a surprise. That’s a grief and a horror and a pain beyond my ability to express it to you.
Of course, no one can know the future, but I’ll tell you what I now suspect is coming:
1) Very soon – within a decade at most – we are going to have good communication between this level of reality and the afterlife. Then everyone is going to know that all those babies being aborted – even at maybe only six weeks’ gestation – are being rescued and grow into young adults and are going to greet their moms some day. Once women and girls are armed with that knowledge, the abortion rate is going to drop like a rock! Pregnancy doesn’t just happen to us, after all, like catching the sniffles. It can be prevented. Once women know the truth, they will avoid getting pregnant, and if they do get pregnant they will carry those babies to term and either rear them or give them up for adoption. “Products of conception” will become an archaic term that we recall with a mild horror at prior human ignorance, sort of the way we now think of balancing bodily humors by bleeding the sick.
2) In a hundred years – and it may not take that long – abortion is going to be looked back on the same way that we now look back on slavery. If you read the pro-slavery literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, you see exactly the same sorts of arguments being used to justify slavery as are being used now to justify abortion. It was a cultural institution in which the rights of what were then considered to be lesser human beings were made subservient to the rights of fully human people who had a perfect right to own their own property (just as women have a right to own their bodies). It was even better for that property to be owned and cared for (just as it is better for unwanted children to be aborted). Every argument favoring abortion has its counterpart in the pro-slavery literature because, to be frank, the situations are analogous: both involve a strong person and a weaker or dependent person, and one of them is going to lose that contest. Always, we find reasons for the stronger person to win. But as was true with slavery, when we dehumanize unborn people in order to justify making them lose that contest, we cheapen and dehumanize all of human life.
Thank you for commenting, dear Mark, and thank you for giving me the chance to say that!
I had an abortion. It was the biggest mistake of my life! I my baby. What do I do?
I meant to say I miss my baby. I made a huge mistake!
Oh my dear, my heart breaks for you! Abortion is sold to American women as an easy way out, when for so many that quick relief soon turns into a lifetime of grief. I am so sorry! Dear Andrea, all that I can tell you is that, based upon all the evidence:
1) Your baby is fine, healthy and happy, and growing up in an atmosphere of perfect love. Within a few earth-years (5-8, we think) he or she will be a beautiful young adult who will watch over you, consider you his or her mother, and greet you joyfully when you transition in your turn.
2) Your baby doesn’t judge or blame you! It may help you to give the child a name (maybe a gender-neutral name) and say that you love him or her, you made a mistake, you are sorry, and you look forward to the moment when you can be together again. Don’t keep apologizing, though, since there is no need! Instead, maybe sometimes talk to Jordan or Kelly or whatever name you have chosen, just as you might do if there had been a miscarriage.
3) Consider joining a grieving parents’ group. The best one is Helping Parents Heal, which is based in the Phoenix area but has chapters worldwide. No need to say anything beyond the fact that you had a miscarriage, dear. They will give you wonderful love and support!
4) You MUST forgive yourself! Please send me a contact through this website – there are contact blocks on all the main pages – and I will send you a PDF of The Fun of Growing Forever. Unless you can manage self-forgiveness, you will find it difficult ever to move on from here.
I hope this helps, dear Andrea. Please let me know how you are doing!
Dear Roberta, thank you for this, and for your kind reply to Andrea. I hope she has by now found her peace.
There is much to think about in your blog.
I had understood – I think it was a talk by the lovely Susan Giesemann and her team Sanaya – that no-one comes into this life intending to take another life.
However, an experience I had adds nuances to the issue when it comes to abortion.
I was on a ‘Spirit Portraits’ course at the Arthur Findlay College near London, which trains mediums. In the class I was working as the ‘medium’ with another student who I did not know, the ‘sitter.’ The spirit portrait that I drew for the sitter was of a baby, and I knew that the baby had grown up in spirit. The spirit came to say thank you for giving him the experience of life – and it was all meant to be. My sitter was shaken, and said that many years ago he and his partner had decided to abort their baby, and it was a very difficult decision.
Since I was a novice, I called one of the class leaders over – a very respected medium. The medium confirmed that yes, it was all meant to be, it was planned that the spirit just feel the connection in the womb. He could not have been born here in a physical body, as where he was in his development he could not have tolerated our physical world. He was grateful for the experience.
It is important to stand up for those who are unable to stand up for themselves, in whatever way we can. It is the way of love, isn’t it. However, as we try to get our head around these issues, what may complicate things sometimes is our ignorance as to what extent we have pre-planned each of our challenges.
Dear Alex, I recall reading about one other instance where a baby that grew up in spirit later said that she hadn’t yet been ready for a whole incarnation, so she had chosen an in utero exit point. Can’t recall now, though, whether it was an abortion; I think it might have been a miscarriage.
The point I would make is that even if a few of these children who die or are murdered in utero might have planned such lives, most of those who are aborted did not! There are theories that since there is no time in the astral, those planning lives would know that an abortion was going to happen so they would bypass that particular fetus. But, what about the mother? What about Andrea, above? The ease of abortion now means that there are in fact many women who regret having had abortions.
Personally, I think that if we were to establish a reasonable balance – easy abortions in the first trimester, say, and after that only for health reasons – most Americans would be able to make peace with that.