Who Bears the Guilt for Forced Abortion?

During the era of family planning, when women became pregnant with a second or third child, they feared being penalized for exceeding birth limits and were forced into abortions. To whom does the karmic fault of such abortions belong? When individuals are coerced by authorities or compelled by external circumstances into abortions against their will, the one undergoing the abortion bears no fault. However, those who formulate the policies, the officials at all levels who implement them, and the medical personnel who perform the abortions all incur varying degrees of karmic fault. Therefore, individuals holding high-ranking official positions, wielding significant power, also bear immense responsibility. The suitability of a single policy affects the interests, including lives, of millions or even billions of people; the karmic consequences are particularly grave.

The doctors and nurses who perform abortions create negative karma, forge negative karmic connections with sentient beings, and bear the karmic responsibility. Even when not involving acts of killing like abortion, simply by saving one person, they form negative karmic ties with that person's karmic creditors and consequently bear the karmic obstacles for the patient. This is why doctors in hospitals generally have shorter lifespans compared to ordinary people. What the world sees as the virtuous act of healing and saving lives is not actually virtuous. Similarly, professions like lawyers and judges are also burdened with carrying others' karmic obstacles.

Bodhisattvas generally do not choose to hold official positions. They are capable of becoming kings or prime ministers but refrain from doing so. Governing a nation requires establishing institutions like prisons to detain people, necessitates dealing with criminals, and involves managing conflicts like wars. Consequently, it invariably touches upon significant matters of life and death; mishandling can lead to grave negative karma. Furthermore, policies concerning taxation and other aspects of people's livelihoods, along with issues related to laws, regulations, and rules, can all result in heavy negative karma if not handled properly.

Within the teaching profession, some impart the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion. Most societal elites propagate some degree of these afflictions, as they themselves have not eradicated them; their physical, verbal, and mental actions align with greed, hatred, and delusion. Industries like gaming, movies, television, and short dramas also disseminate the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, along with methods for creating negative karma. Even within Buddhism, which advocates for the cessation of these afflictions, many individuals propagate greed, hatred, and delusion to sentient beings. Lay practitioners propagate them the most, inevitably, given their close proximity to secular life, where greed, hatred, and delusion are difficult to subdue, constantly arising, causing afflictions to unknowingly spread and defile sentient beings. Some are not unknowingly spreading afflictions but knowingly commit the fault, deliberately allowing sentient beings to be defiled by afflictions to profit from it.