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If you have a party, you got to clean up afterwards. If you got a baby inside you it is the best place for it. There are exceptions, as all of us know.

Buddhism teaches that life begins when the male and female fluids mix at the time of intimacy, if and only if the mix is successful. Otherwise, there is no pregnancy, and the ethereal being seeking rebirth will have to try again. But, if the mix is successful, that means a person is inside its mother’s womb. and wants to be loved and cherished until she emerges from the comfort of the womb into the chilly air and experiences the warmth of her mother’s caress and suckles her breast and feels the breath of the one caressing her as she looks down upon the little bundle whom she will be everything to henceforth.

Nothing happens by accident; so, thinking: “I didn’t mean to get pregnant is a terrible excuse.” Not that mistakes don’t happen; but if they do, we should be responsible. In everything we do in life, we take responsibility for our mistakes. If we crash into someone’s car, we pay. If we cheat on an exam and get caught, we pay. If we drop a dish, we sweep it up and throw it out. It may not be what we want to do, but we must pay for our accidents.

With all the tools we have to avoid pregnancy, if it happens it is not an “accident” maybe it was meant to be. Buddhism teaches a human birth is extremely difficult to achieve. According to this philosophy after death a person becomes an ethereal being and follows his destiny in the “in-between state” until his next rebirth. The “in-between” can be positive or negative according to the travellers previous actions before he died. As far as rebirth goes, if his actions were negative, he may not even enjoy rebirth as a human and instead take rebirth as an animal—or worse (not to go into here.) And, even if his actions earned a human birth, it is not necessarily in favorable conditions.

When couples make love and climax a light is emitted, no pun intended, but it is a green light and signals to a being in the astral world that, Ah ha!, there is a vacancy, and that being hones down on that light and checks-in. Finding a vacancy is not easy and when found the tenant considers himself fortunate. The next few weeks are crucial for the early weeks are delicate and even mother carrying a heavy box, or falling from a bicycle, or slipping and falling, can mean that being inside her must leave and start searching anew for a dwelling place.

The fact that we have the option to deliberately do what might occur by accident does not mean it is right to do so from a Buddhist perspective because from the moment of conception a “person” is conceived and has all the rights of the persons conceiving him as his hosts. So, if we act to the detriment of the life within us, we will add extremely negative causes to our life going forward.

But what is love? Is it always what we want? Or does it sometimes package itself a little differently than we expect it and be something we have to grow into? If we can’t think to give the life we brought into us a chance; can we not consider giving ourselves chance; a chance to explore what love is..

But love emerges from the unexpected and is not some contrived concoction of our thinking mind. Love is a journey and may well arise from what is we don’t anticipate. So, whether we give shelter or not to the new arrival within us, the issue is not only about depriving the life of another; but our own life as well.