abortion after the child has become an independent unit, I agree it becomes a genocide. It becomes a genocide unless the life of the mother is threatened which comparatively speaking is to be preferred over the child. So if there is a comparison has to be made between the life of the mother and the life of the child, Islam would rather have you save the life of the mother than that of the child. So that is a medical exigency. Otherwise it will be a crime to kill the baby after he reaches the stage of independent survival.
Before that it is again a very doubtful issue. You can, the Holy Quran tells us one thing, that to abort for the sake of, for keeping in view the food problems or for the sake of being saved from the perils of poverty, that is criminal. Islam does not permit us that. But for other reasons and the reason there must be some, to abort or to try to prevent birth, that is permitted. Now to abort I think I have gone a bit too far. From the study of the behaviour of the companions of the Holy Prophet, all that is proved is not abortion after pregnancy but an effort to prevent pregnancy. So contraceptive measures are positively proved to be in practice during the time of Hazrat Rasoolul Akram sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and were witnessed by his companions. But there too the Holy Quran warned that you should not go for contraception when you have a fear of poverty in mind, the fear of poverty of food and the general food problem as the world looks at this problem.
Because that is a very bad reflection on Allah. So in Ahmadiyyat too, this has been the practice, if somebody asks, this is the answer, that if the health of the woman is in jeopardy, if you don’t want to have two close children with little gaps in between, if you’re not afraid of poverty and that’s not what you’re avoiding, then go ahead and use contraceptive measures, nothing wrong with that. But that abortion again, when the life is given shape, even if it’s independent, one should not be permitted to play with that. But there are two aspects to it. Now that is not religious as much as legal question.
As far as the punishment is concerned, personally I tend to believe that the punishment for the abortion of the first period should be definitely less than the punishment of the second period. That is more like a murder than the previous one. And to use contraceptive measures is less like a murder, obviously, much less. So it graduates into that ultimately.
