Hinduism is an ancient religion practiced by hundreds of millions in India and abroad. One commentator describes it as:

“…more than just a creed: it is a total culture, a way of life based on the belief in the unity of all creation. Hindus, like Buddhists, see humankind not as an entity separate from animals, but rather as an integral part of the universe that includes all living creatures. Although Hinduism is well known for considering cows to be holy, in Hindu doctrine, all living creatures, including insects, plants, and trees, are thought to enjoy a kinship with one another and to be worthy of respect and life.”

According to Nine Beliefs of Hinduism, a tract published by the Himalayan Academy of San Francisco: “Hindus believe that all life is sacred, to be loved and revered, and therefore practice ahimsa, or nonviolence.” All life is sacred because all creatures are manifestations of the Supreme Being.

The Hindu practice of nonviolence is connected to a belief in reincarnation: the repeated re-embodiment of souls in different species of life. The karma generated in one’s present life determines whether one enjoys a higher or suffers a lower existence in the next reincarnation. Dr. T. K. Venkateswaran, a Hindu leader in the Parliament of the World’s Religions, writes that karma is “the moral and physical law of cause and effect by which each individual creates one’s own future destiny.” Hinduism teaches that there are 8,400,000 species of life, beginning with the microbes, rising through the fish, plants, insects, reptiles, birds, and animals to the humans and gods.

According to their desires, living entities perpetually take birth in these species. These transmigrations are directed by the mind propelling the soul to newer and newer bodies. As Dr. Venkateswaran notes, “All souls are evolving and progressing towards union with God….The individual soul reincarnates, evolving through many births and deaths, until all the karmic results, good and bad, are resolved.”

Hinduism teaches that abortion, like any other act of violence, thwarts a soul in its progress toward God. Why does the Hindu community seem silent on the abortion issue? Dr. K. S. Krishnan of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Kerala, India, offered this explanation for the apparent silence: “Personally, I feel that a sannyassi [monk] should have no chance of discussing the private life of a lady. That can only happen when a lady approaches him to become a disciple.”

Nonetheless, Hindu scriptures and tradition have from the earliest of times condemned the practice of abortion, except when the life of the mother is in danger. Hinduism teaches that the fetus is a living, conscious person needing and deserving protection. Hindu scriptures refer to abortion as garha-batta (womb killing) and bhroona hathya (killing the undeveloped soul). A hymn in the Rig Veda (7.36.9, RvP, 2469) begs for protection of fetuses. The Kaushitaki Upanishad (3.1 UpR, 774) draws a parallel between abortion and the killing of one’s parents. The Atharva Veda (6.113.2 HE, 43) remarks that the fetus slayer, or brunaghni, is among the greatest of sinners (6.113.2).

In modern times, India’s greatest apostle of nonviolence, Mohandas Gandhi, has written: “It seems to me clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.” The international periodical Hinduism Today acknowledges: “Across the board, Hindu religious leaders perceive abortion at any stage of fetal development as killing (some say murder)…and as an act that has serious karmic repercussions.” For example, Swami Kamalatmananda of the Ramakrishna Monastery in Madras, India, has said: “No human being has the right to destroy the fetus. If having a baby is economically and socially problematic, one can very well take precautions to avoid such unwanted birth rather than killing the baby. Precaution is better than destruction.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is India’s greatest scholar, philosopher, cultural ambassador, author, and spiritual leader. His teachings on the subject of abortion are very clear:

“They are killing the baby in the womb. How cruel! In this age of unwanted population, man is losing his compassion. When you kill a living entity, even an ant, you are interfering with its spiritual evolution, its progress. That living entity must again take on that same life form to complete its designated life term in that body. And the killer must return to pay for damages.”

Elsewhere Srila Prabhupada has written:

You are killing innocent cows and other animals–nature will take revenge. Just wait. As soon as the time is right, nature will gather all these rascals and slaughter them. Finished. They’ll fight among themselves. It is going on. Why? This is nature’s law. You have killed. Now you kill yourselves.

“They are sending animals to the slaughterhouse, and now they’ll create their own slaughterhouse….This is nature’s law. It’s not necessary that you be sent to the ordinary slaughterhouse. You’ll make a slaughterhouse at home. You’ll kill your own child–abortion. This is nature’s law.

“Who are these children being killed? They are these meat-eaters. They enjoyed themselves when so many animals were killed, and now they’re being killed by their mothers.

“People do not know how nature is working. If you kill, you must be killed. If you kill the cow who is your mother, then in some future lifetime your mother will kill you. Yes. The mother becomes the child, and the child becomes the mother.”

Srila Prabhupada’s teachings indicate a spiritual link between humans and other sentient creatures: violence towards animals leads only toward violence against other human beings. Satya Narayana dasa similarly notes that people who commit violence against their unborn children will be subjected to the same violence in future reincarnations. The cycle of killing stops only through the practice of ahimsa toward all.

One need not be a Hindu or even believe in reincarnation to conclude that the practice of ahimsa towards all is the only way to stop the cycle of killing that surrounds abortion. The anti-abortion and animal-rights movements in the West are predominantly non-Hindu but often invoke such a belief. Animal-rights activists compare the rights of animals to those of very young human children, insisting that a lack of respect for the lives and rights of animals brutalizes humans into insenstivity toward one another.

Anti-abortion activists consider abortion the ultimate form of child abuse, and claim that child-abuse rates have risen dramatically since abortion was legalized. Acceptance of abortion, they argue, leads to a devaluation of human life and paves the way toward acceptance of infanticide and euthanasia.

Though anti-abortionists may grasp that “violence begets violence,” they often do not extend this understanding to the issue of animal rights. Hindus and non-Hindus alike can recognize that this is self-defeating. Animals are sentient, autonomous beings possessing many mental capacities comparable to those of human children. If we fail to see animals as part of our moral community, how will we ever extend our sphere of moral concern to embrace humans in their most primitive stages of development? Anti-abortionists look in horror as an entire class of humans are systematically stripped of their rights, executed, and even used as tools for medical research. Yet this is what we humans have been doing to other sentient creatures for millennia.

A contemporary Hindu spiritual master, Srila Hridayananda dasa Goswami, comments on this shortcoming of the anti-abortion movement:

Insisting that human life begins at conception, the anti-abortion movement seeks to shock us into the awareness that abortion means killing–killing a human being rather than an animal, a bird, an insect, or a fish. Thus although the movement calls itself ‘pro-life,’ it is really pro-human-life. Its fudging with the terms ‘life’ and ‘human life’ reveals a disturbing assumption: that nonhuman life is somehow not actually life at all, or, if it is, then it is somehow not as ‘sacred’ as human life and therefore not worth protecting….If the pro-life movement can become part of a broader struggle to recognize the sacredness of all life…then undoubtedly it will attain great success.”