BUDDHISM AND ABORTION

BUDDHISM AND ABORTION

Also by Damien Keown and published by Macmillan THE NATURE OF BUDDHIST ETHICS BUDDHISM AND BIOETHICS

Buddhism and Abortion Edited by Damien Keown Senior Lecturer in Indian Religion Goldsmiths College, University of London

Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Chapter 10 Damien Keown 1998 Chapters 2-9 Macmillan Press Ltd 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-14180-7 ISBN 978-1-349-14178-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-14178-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10987654 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 3 2 I 00 99 98

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Contents Acknowledgements Contributors 1 Introduction Damien Keown ix X 1 Part One 2 Abortion in Buddhist Thailand Robert E. Florida 3 Abortion and Prostitution in Bangkok Cleo Odzer 4 Socio-Medical Aspects of Abortion in Thailand Pinit Ratanakul 11 31 53 Part Two 5 Abortion in Japan: Towards a 'Middle Way' for the West? William R. LaFleur 67 6 'I can only move my feet towards mizuko kuyo' 93 Memorial Services for Dead Children in Japan Elizabeth G. Harrison Vll

viii Contents 7 Abortion in Korea 121 Frank Tedesco Part Three 8 Abortion in the Pali Canon and Early 157 Buddhist Thought James P. McDermott 9 Buddhism and Abortion: A Western Approach 183 James Hughes 10 Buddhism and Abortion: Is There 199 a 'Middle Way'? Damien Keown Glossary 219 Index 221

Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the following, without whose assistance the volume could not have appeared in its present form: Princeton University Press for permission to use material in chapter five adapted from Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan by William R. LaFleur; the Daeyang Research Fund of Sejong University which kindly provided funding for research by Frank Tedesco in 1995 which led to chapter seven; Canisius College, Buffalo, New York, for supporting research leading to chapter eight by James McDermott with a Summer Grant and Supplemental Research Grant from the Faculty Research Fund. On a personal note there are many individuals and institutions I would like to thank. The Religious Studies Program at Pennsylvania State University provided a travel grant which allowed me to present chapter ten at a seminar there in November 1995. The chapter was previously given as a paper at Bristol University, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, in October 1995 and I am grateful to staff and students at both institutions for their comments. I am also grateful to the Spalding Trust which generously funded a one year visiting research fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge for 1996-7 which allowed me to complete the editing much sooner than would otherwise have been possible. I also wish to record my appreciation of the efforts made by the contributors, who worked hard to produce the chapters contained herein in the face of other pressing commitments. It has been a pleasure to work with such learned and co-operative colleagues. Finally, thanks are due to Tim Farmiloe, Annabelle Buckley and Charmian Hearne of Macmillan, and Pat Crosby of the University of Hawaii Press, for steering the volume so smoothly into production, and to Jason Lyon for proofreading the final draft. ix

Contributors Robert Florida is Professor of Religion and Dean of Arts at Brandon University, in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. He has published several articles on Buddhist ethics and is active in a cross-cultural health care ethics research team involving Canadian and Thai universities and health professionals. Cleo Odzer is a researcher and Webmaster for Daytop Village in New York. Her published works include Patpong Sisters, Goa Freaks, and the forthcoming Virtual Spaces. Pinit Ratanakul is Director of the Center of Human Resources Development, Mahidol University, Bangkok. He is the author of Bioethics, An Introduction to the Ethics of Medicine and Life Sciences, and has published widely on medical ethics from a Thai Buddhist perspective. William R. LaFleur is Professor of Japanese and the Joseph B. Glassberg Term Professor of Humanities at University of Pennsylvania. His many publications include Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan, and Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective. Elizabeth G. Harrison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. She has published several articles on memorial services for dead children in Japan and is currently completing a collaborative book-length manuscript on the same topic with Professor Bardwell Smith of Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, USA. She is also pursuing historical research on Buddhist sermons in Japan. X

Contributors xi Frank Tedesco teaches at Sejong University in Seoul, Korea. He is a researcher in contemporary social issues, bioethics and religion in Asia. He is an adviser to the Korean National Commission for UNESCO and other NGOs. James P. McDermott is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religious Studies, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York. He is the author of Development in the Early Buddhist Concept of Kamma!Karma. James Hughes is a sociologist, bioethicist, and Assistant Director of Research at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, University of Chicago. Damien Keown is Senior Lecturer in Indian Religion at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His published works on ethics include The Nature of Buddhist Ethics and Buddhism & Bioethics. He is co-editor (with Charles S. Prebish) of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.