QUESTION: But if a woman is raped or if she knows that her child is going to be deformed, wouldn’t it be better to stop the pregnancy?
ANSWER: A child conceived as the result of a rape is as entitled to live and be loved as any other ch1d. He or she should not he killed simply because their biological father committed a crime. Giving birth to a deformed or mentally retarded child would be a terrible shock for the parents but if its okay to abort a fetus like this then why not kill children or adults who are deformed or handicapped? There might be situations where abortion was the most humane alternative, for example, to save the life of a mother. But let’s be honest, most abortions arc preformed simply because the pregnancy is inconvenient, an embarrassment or because the parents want to have the child later. To Buddhists, these seem a very poor reasons to destroy a life.