4 min readMay 19, 2026 02:55 PM IST
First published on: May 19, 2026 at 02:55 PM IST
In the award-winning Lebanese film, Capernaum, the 12-year-old protagonist, Zain, is asked by the judge why he wants to sue his parents. “Because I was born,” Zain says. Through his parents, Zain confronts us, adults, for first turning the world into Capernaum (broadly, a site of chaos) and then bringing children into it.
In the recent debate about the right to abortion beyond 24 weeks, Zain could be any one of us, the unborn child of the 15-year-old rape survivor, or its 15-year-old child-mother. In a remarkable departure from law and the medical establishment, the Supreme Court permitted abortion.
Among the opinions sparked by this permission, a recent article (‘Law is not the problem. Abortion in India needs honest engagement and implementation’, IE, May 15) mentioned the “spiritual dimension” of the potential birth of the unborn child. Anti-abortion discourse often leans on the religio-spiritual to support its arguments for birth.
However, there are different spiritual dimensions at play as well — for the right of the child not to be born. “Spiritual” here carries its humanistic, existential connotations that centre our shared fibre and invoke our innate oneness.
Like Zain, millions are born — many accidentally — in circumstances that are unfit for a child, if not precarious or harmful. It is this unnecessary yet pervasive human drama and suffering that Zain challenges in the fictional court. By allowing the termination of the pregnancy of the minor, the Supreme Court has prevented many real-life Zains from reaching their overcrowded, overloaded courtrooms.
The point? Birth is not necessarily a welcome event, even via spiritual and philosophical frames.
This is an upstream argument, and therefore even more fundamental to the debate on abortion. It goes like this: Since suffering is an inescapable reality of human life, every newborn will inevitably suffer repeatedly throughout their life. Suffering implies a range (of mild to intense) psychological distress caused by dissatisfaction, anxiety, anger, hatred, depression, besides bodily pain and discomfort, and the like. Philosophers such as David Benatar (author of Better Never to Have Been) see birth as a moral wrong because it places an innocent being in harm’s way, of course, without their knowledge and consent. But since the parent knows that the newborn will suffer, they are accountable for their choice to give birth. This act of harm is driven by a spectrum of the parents’ own present and future needs of caregiving and receiving. This cynical but realistic perspective is not just held by a global, growing community of antinatalists.
The centrality and certainty of suffering are also affirmed by spiritual traditions such as Buddhism. It calls birth the first step in recurrent cycles of suffering that include sickness, ageing, and death. Birth unleashes a continuum of trishna (craving), which creates a continuum of suffering that keeps us trapped in the world. Buddhism is not antinatalist and does not prohibit procreation for its lay followers. But its ultimate recommendation against the suffering of human life — or “crossing the flood” (Saṁyutta Nikāya or Connected Discourses) — is to transcend birth itself. It can be done by cultivating discerning self-awareness and weeding out self-deception, delusion, and craving. This could mean, including for the issue of abortion, a balanced response between compassion for the raped minor and her circumstance and a fixed, doctrinaire refusal to abortion.
An equally potent consideration is the spiritual distress of the pregnant person, in this case, a child herself. The grip of pronatalism and motherhood on our psyches can blind us to her sense of overwhelm around selfhood, existence, and purpose. Bringing a new human into the world, under any circumstance — even through the mother’s strong unwillingness and anguish, or coercing her to carry the child to term only to offer the baby for adoption — is a seriously fraught proposition that does not augur well for either the parent or the potential child. There is ample evidence about the relationship between unwanted pregnancies, childhood trauma, abuse, and lifelong psychological challenges for the mother and child.
Between an unborn child and its living mother, the Supreme Court chose well not to reproduce suffering from one to two.
Nandy is author of Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women
