Buddhism suggests a "middle way" between worldly life and the extremes of self-denial, this is similar to the mean way suggested by Aristotle. The Buddha taught what he referred to as 'the Middle Way, a path that led to enlightenment by avoiding the extremes of sensory self-indulgence and self-mortification. Just as the Buddha argued against self-mortification as a practice that is beneficial to spiritual advancement, he also warned against indulgence in sensual pleasures. A key passage from the scriptures is this one: 'One should not pursue sensual pleasure, which is low, vulgar, coarse, ignoble, and unbeneficial; and one should not pursue self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and unbeneficial. The Middle Way avoids both extremes; giving vision, giving knowledge, it leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana'.
Through the years there have been many philosophers that do not believe in life after death. Among them is David Hume. David Hume was a British imperialist to the extreme. He only believed in what he could see. He felt that if you can't see your soul or god then they must not exist. The same holds true for the after life, or heaven. He felt that when you died that was it, your life was over and there was nothing more.
I will focus on euthanasia and abortion. I would like to state that the majority of my facts on this subject have come from a lecture given by Lawrence. M. Hinman in a university in America. Although the facts are based on American statistics it is still shocking to see, for instance 85% of Americans die in some kind of health-care facility, and of this group 70% choose to withhold some kind of life-sustaining treatment, this could be classed as a form of passive euthanasia. What’s scary is that this is actually 60% of the whole American population.
Euthanasia means “a good death” or “dying well” but what is a good death? People have said a good death is peaceful, painless, lucid and with loved ones gathered around. But the argument against passive euthanasia is that does passive euthanasia sometimes cause more suffering? By withholding life-sustaining treatment it sometimes means that pain relief is withheld, causing pain not only to the patient but also the family, this would go against utilitarian ethics idea of the “greatest good for the greatest number”. Although in the long run this may be different because the pain caused at the start may be outweighed by the end of long term suffering for the patient and the end to seeing a loved one suffering for the family. The main question that we must ask ourselves is what is the Sanctity of life? Christians say life is a gift from God and life is “priceless”. And also that we must respect our lives and not cause unnecessary pain or suffering. In this argument there are a number of other questions which can only be answered by personal opinion. Do we have a right to die? Do we own our own bodies and our lives? If we do own our own bodies, does that give us the right to do whatever we want with them? Isn’t it cruel to let people suffer pointlessly?
Ethically we can look at this from two main model points of view, a utilitarian model, which emphasizes consequences or a Kantian model, which emphasizes autonomy, rights and respect. If looking from a utilitarian point of view there are four main points brought up. Morality is a matter of consequence, we must count the consequences for everyone, everyone’s suffering counts equally and we must always act in a way that produces the greatest overall good consequences and least overall bad consequences. If we go back to the question what is a good death? Jeremy Bentham is a hedonic utilitarian and answers this by saying a good death is a painless death. John Stuart Mill on the other hand is a eudaimonistic utilitarian and says a good death is a happy death.
A Kantian model states that people cannot be treated like mere things and the key notions lie in autonomy and dignity, respect and rights. Kant felt that human beings were distinctive, they have the ability to reason and the ability to decide on the basis of that reasoning and autonomy for Kant it is the ability to impose reason freely on oneself. So taking this into consideration it could be said that if you have reasonably thought about euthanasia and come to the conclusion that it is the best option for you then it is. Kantians emphasize the importance of a patient’s right to decide. Utilitarians look only at consequences. Human beings have the ability to make up their own minds in accord with the dictates of reason, they have certain rights and we have a duty to respect that right. To some up, many of the ethical disagreements about end-of-life decisions can be seen as resulting from different ethical frameworks, especially Kantian and utilitarian.
But where does this leave us in the discussion on life after death. Well, some believe that taking of your own life, is no matter how we look at it, suicide which is ethically and morally wrong and for Christians and Catholics will lead to hell, if there is such an after life.
Buddhists are not unanimous in their view of euthanasia, and the teachings of the Buddha don't explicitly deal with it. Most Buddhists (like almost everyone else) are against involuntary euthanasia. Their position on voluntary euthanasia is less clear. The most common position is that voluntary euthanasia is wrong, because it demonstrates that one's mind is in a bad state and that one has allowed physical suffering to cause mental suffering. Meditation and the proper use of pain killing drugs should enable a person to attain a state where they are not in mental pain, and so no longer contemplate euthanasia or suicide.Buddhists might also argue that helping to end someone's life is likely to put the helper into a bad mental state, and this too should be avoided.
Buddhism places great stress on non-harm, and on avoiding the ending of life. The reference is to life - any life - so the intentional ending of life seems against Buddhist teaching and voluntary euthanasia should be forbidden. Certain codes of Buddhist monastic law explicitly forbid it. Lay-people do not have a code of Buddhist law, so the strongest that can be said of a lay person who takes part in euthanasia is that they have made an error of judgement. Buddhists regard death as a transition. The deceased person will be reborn to a new life, whose quality will be the result of their karma. This produces two problems. We don't know what the next life is going to be like. If the next life is going to be even worse than the life that the sick person is presently enduring it would clearly be wrong on a utilitarian basis to permit euthanasia, as that shortens the present bad state of affairs in favour of an even worse one. The second problem is that shortening life interferes with the working out of karma, and alters the karmic balance resulting from the shortened life.
Now looking at abortion. Many ethical philosophers had opinions on whether abortion was morally right or wrong, Hippocrates (5th Cent. BC) forbade abortions, Plato and Aristotle (4th Cent. BC) endorsed it as a means of population control. When looking at abortion from an ethical point of view the main point we need to ascertain is whether an abortion is killing a person or not. For this we must decide what constitutes a person.
Lets look at Aristotle’s idea, he stated “When couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun." In Politics book VII. He distinguished between different types of soul, with humans having intellectual or rational soul. But he believed that a foetus developed this type of soul at 40 days gestation for a male and 80-90 days gestation for a female, this was termed “delayed hominization” therefore after this period of time an abortion would be killing another human being, because they have a soul to be considered a person.
Augustine gave two different views of abortion. First he wrote in On Exodus that early abortion should not be regarded "as homicide, for there cannot be a living soul in a body that lacks sensation due to its not yet being fully formed", he agreed with Aristotle’s idea that the souls are implanted at 40 and 80 days. However, in another work, On Marriage and Lust, Augustine condemned both abortion and contraception as immoral, since they permit sexual intercourse to occur without procreation, which he thought to be its only "natural" purpose.
Many philosophers such as John of Naples, Tomas Sanchez and Alphonsus Ligouri, argued that abortion was acceptable as long as it was the "accidental" or "unintended" consequence of treatment necessary to save the mother's life. Their approach suggests the "theory of double effect," where a bad result is permitted as long as it is unintended (even if foreseen) and proportionate to a good, intended result.
Buddha on the other hand was trying to get away from giving rules about anything. He told his followers not to believe anything either he or any other religious authority said simply on trust. The emphasis in his teaching was on investigating the teachings - testing them against personal experience to see if within yourself you find them to be true. Buddha's actual teachings in an issue like abortion there is no absolute ruling.
What a Buddhist should do when contemplating a moral issue like that is to examine certain Buddhist principles and come to some conclusion for themselves. One principle would be the First Precept. The First Precept is a moral principle that Buddhists should try to keep as far as they are able. It is "I will not harm any living creature." Note that this does not just apply to humans, so the question as to whether a foetus is fully human does not arise here - if it is accepted that the foetus is alive, it should not be harmed. The general Buddhist belief about rebirth is that at conception three things come together - the sperm, the egg, and the karmic force that is the effect of a previous life. human life begins at the moment of conception. Human life begins at the moment of conception. If a human foetus is terminated or otherwise dies, this might mean in Buddhist terms that bad karma carried over from the previous life has been 'paid', and so the next life will be more fortunate. However at the same time the people concerned with causing the abortion (say the woman, doctors etc.) will be generating bad karma themselves for this act of violence.
In Buddhist terms whether an action is good or bad largely depends on one's intention. If a woman was to reflect deeply on her proposed act and felt that in her heart a decision to have an abortion is not based on selfishness then maybe the act would not generate bad karma. The whole Buddhist approach to ethics can be summed up in one word - compassion. This is more important than any rules or doctrines. Compassion for the unborn foetus is necessary, but other conditions need to be considered, and compassion for the pregnant woman is vital too So to conclude, very generally it might be fair to say that most Buddhists would feel that in principle abortion is wrong, or at least very regrettable, but one should always examine the circumstances and allow for exceptions, and not be condemning of those who arrive at a different conclusion.