Bad vs. Good | False vs. True | Wrong vs. Right

[ERose]

I think the Buddha’s view might be that “life” begins at the time of conception, what you say when you refer to “a fertilized egg.”

I think the Buddha’s view on this issue is that life begins when the egg is fertilized by sperm - “at conception.”

This topic has been discussed in numerous threads here (as well as being a topic of discussion elsewhere for a long time. AFAIK what YOU think about fertilized eggs is not what the Buddha said, as far as we can know based on the EBTs. If you disagree, please offer citations. It could be of interest to many.

Some of the relevant discussions here

Abortion and Buddhism

The Buddha obviously did not endorse abortion, placing strict prohibitions upon monks arranging or recommending abortion. Yet the Buddha obviously did not expect all people to follow his path. For those that believed they made a mistake in life, the Buddha was always ready to forgive (end of DN 2 for example). Buddha practises forgiveness rather than terrorises people caught up in difficult life situations. As for kamma (action), the effects (vipaka) generally follow on the intention. Thus, i…

On the Pali term bhūnaha, abortion, and the paradox of life

In a number of EBT passages we find the term bhunaha. The suffix is -han, to kill. The first element of the compound has sometimes been taken as bhū “being” (eg. Nyanamoli “wrecker of being”). It is glossed in the Pali commentaries as “growth”, a term whose sense overlaps with that of bhū, and rendered by Ven Bodhi as “destroying growth”, a rendering he has maintained from the Middle Length Discourses to the Numerical Discourses. However, the relevant Sanskrit term is bhrūṇa, from the root bhṛ,…

Why Are 82% of American Buddhists Pro-Choice?

According to a recent Pew Study, 82% of American Buddhists are in favor of abortion being legal. I stumbled upon this survey while reading an article entitled, “Why Are Jews So Pro-Choice?,” which speculates why 83% of American Jews are pro-choice, citing mostly Jewish law as the basis for the high percentage. As someone who has always felt sort of like a bad Buddhist for being pro-choice, the 82 number surprises me. The first-precept is obviously pretty clear with regards to taking life, and I…

I think that the Buddha says that three conditions are necessary for a being to be born: female being must be fertile, sexual intercourse, and a gandhabba (that is to take birth).
I think all 3 are fundamentally necessary for the birth to occur - the occurrence of all three are the necessary and sufficient condition for birth to take place. Without any of the three, birth will not take place.

Thus, I don’t think that a suitable discussion of this topic can take place without considering all three factors, right?

If your statement in bold were true, it would prove a fertilized egg as is cannot have all three; it cannot born. Nor is birth is possible for a fertilized egg, a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, or fetuses; the stages are not sufficient. This is not just true for human life, but all birthed life forms, and analogously true for all others; recall the simile of dry seeds without nourishment.
Time and nourishment and conditions matter. Were this not the case, human life would not be fortunate. AFAIK this is not just physically or materialisticly true, but it is true on that level.

MN 38 examination:

Why Are 82% of American Buddhists Pro-Choice?

I think the above posts have probably explained most of the reason for this—the socially liberal or progressive attitudes of most American Buddhists, and the lack of a decisive doctrine within Buddhism (more on this below)—but there is another factor at work here. And that is that the Dhamma is not a legalistic morality. The fact that something is wrong doesn’t mean that it should be illegal. No-one in Buddhism, to my knowledge, is arguing that spraying cockroaches should be made a crime, or tha…

@SeriousFun136

The Buddha doesn’t seem to allow or approve of killing even at the cost of one’s own life

Killing is an intentional act, correct? Let us parse, not conflate or assume or declare, intentions in sensitive matters. Without a divine eye and full liberation from craving, ill will, and delusion, trying to define others’ intentions is a tricky business, likely in some situations at least, to not be harmless.