Whose Guilt Is It for a Forced Abortion?

During the era of the one-child family planning policy, when women became pregnant with a second or third child, they were forced to have abortions for fear of being punished for exceeding the birth quota. To whom does the karmic offense of such an abortion belong? When someone is coerced by authorities, compelled by external conditions and circumstances to have an abortion against their own will, the one who undergoes the abortion is without offense. Those who formulated the policy, the executors at every level, and the people who actually performed the abortions all bear offenses to varying degrees. Therefore, those who hold high official positions and wield great power also bear great responsibility. Whether a policy is formulated appropriately affects the interests of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people, including their very lives—the karmic consequences are especially grave.

The doctors and nurses who perform abortion procedures all have evil karma; they have formed unwholesome karmic bonds with sentient beings and bear karmic responsibility. Even when their work does not involve killing such as abortion, as long as they save a person's life, they form an unwholesome bond with that person's karmic creditors and take on the karmic obstructions on behalf of the patient. That is why hospital doctors tend to have relatively shorter lifespans than ordinary people. The virtue of healing the sick and saving lives, as seen in the eyes of the world, is actually not so virtuous. Likewise, professions such as lawyers and judges are all professions that carry karmic obstructions; they all have to bear the karmic consequences of others.

Bodhisattvas generally do not choose to hold official positions. Even when they could serve as kings or prime ministers, they decline. Governing a country requires establishing prisons and other institutions of confinement, dealing with criminals, and handling wars—all of which involve grave matters of life and death, and if handled poorly, result in grave evil karma. There are also policy issues concerning people's livelihoods, such as taxation, and matters of laws, rules, and regulations—if handled poorly, these too constitute grave evil karma.

Within the teaching profession, there are also those who transmit greed, hatred, and delusion—the afflictions. Most of the elites in various sectors of society transmit some degree of greed, hatred, and delusion, because they themselves have not eradicated these afflictions, and their bodily, verbal, and mental actions all correspond to greed, hatred, and delusion. There is also the gaming industry, as well as the film, television, and short-drama industries, all of which spread the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion and methods of creating evil karma. Even within Buddhism, which advocates the eradication of the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, there are quite a few people who transmit these afflictions to sentient beings; among them, laypeople transmit the most, after all, because they are so close to worldly life. Greed, hatred, and delusion are very hard to subdue; they arise constantly, and the afflictions are unknowingly passed on, tainting sentient beings. Some people do not transmit the afflictions unknowingly, but rather knowingly commit transgressions, deliberately letting sentient beings be tainted by afflictions while they themselves profit from it.