Do aborted babies go to heaven?

[Cristiano]

Since aborted babies go to heaven, then should we have more abortions? Romans 6

Who says that aborted babies go to heaven? The Church does not! We can just hope, but that is quite different story. What about if all the aborted babies were to go the hell because they were not baptized, then what? I would also try to remember that God said not to murder, and that mean to kill an innocent person. Who are you to decide for God which is the best thing to do?

 

[SunshineRose1]

Several years ago my girlfriend of the time got pregnant, we decided that we should have an abortion (I was raised Catholic, but left the Church, my girlfriend never was). The baby was not baptised obviously, so will it go to heaven? I am still not a practicing Catholic, but I am reconsidering my views.

I know this might seem a strange thing to say, but I can deal with the idea of being an accomplice to a murder much or easily than I can deal with the idea that I have kept my child away from God.

I realize that my admition is not going to make me all that popular on this board, but if someone could at least set my mind at ease about my child’s soul, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m sorry to hear about your decision to abort your child, but I am happy to hear that you are considering returning to the Catholic Church, and I pray that you will choose to do so in the end. I think that returning to the Catholic Church really could help you overcome the guilt you feel over aborting your baby.

I can understand the idea of you being able to better handle the notion of being an accomplice to a murder than the idea of taking your child away from God, since in the first case, it is your soul in danger, while in the second scenario, it is your baby’s.

That being said, although your child wasn’t baptized, I believe (even though I don’t know for sure) that your baby will be sent to heaven. I don’t believe that our merciful and just God will condemn your baby for your sin, and I don’t feel that an unborn baby will be punished for not having the time to be baptized or to come to know God as other people do. I think that this combined with the fact that your child had no chance to sin will be enough to get them passage to heaven.

I also don’t picture God as predestining any person for Hell (to me, that smacks of the double predestination of some souls for Hell that I find anathema for a merciful and just God who I believe grants us free will), although I am willing to accept even if I don’t necessarily embrace the Augustinian perspective that some souls by the grace of God are predestined for heaven. To me, the only souls in Hell are those who have chosen through their own free will which God in His mercy granted us to reject God. In my mind, an aborted baby has no opportunity to reject God, and, therefore, will not be sent to Hell.

Still, I can’t promise you that your baby is in heaven (although I firmly believe that to be the case), and I would urge you to pray for the soul of your unborn baby. It certainly can’t do any harm, and, while you are doing so, you definitely should pray for the forgiveness of God and your unborn child.

May God bless you on your journey, and may you remember that His love for you is boundless!

 

[SunshineRose1]

Wait, so, abortion is a mortal sin, I assume. Meaning, if you commit it with full knowledge and deliberate consent, you’re on your way to Hell. Of course, you can repent at a later time and go to Heaven yourself.

**You assume correctly that abortion, as murder, is a mortal sin, which does mean that if you commit it in full knowledge and with deliberate consent, you will, as far as the Church is concerned, be sent to Hell if you have not repented for it. However, while repenting for that sin will save you from punishment for that sin, it will not save you from punishment for other sins you have done, and, therefore, does not by any means guarantee your passage into Heaven.

Also, for a repentance to be effective, it must be genuine. That means that the person doing the repenting understands just how wrong their actions were and sincerely intends to atone for their sin as well as to avoid to the best of their abilities repeating that sin. Repentance is something that God in His mercy allows us sinful mortals, but God, being omniscient, is not a fool Who can be conned with impunity.God’s justice and mercy are perfect, and we cannot outsmart His system like we can mortal courts of law.Thinking we can is a grave error, and probably will not result in our entry to heaven. **

But on the other hand, if you get an abortion, you’ve just sent an eternal soul straight to Heaven.

**How do you know you sent that soul to heaven? How do you know that, as the OP fears, an unbapitzed child won’t be sent right to hell?You may strongly believe that aborted souls go to heaven (as I do), but do you know that? Only God can know for sure who will be saved and who will be damned. **

And you’ve kept that eternal soul from risking Hell by living a full life on Earth.

Or, possibly, you’ve denied that poor soul an opportunity to know, love, and serve God, and thus have damned them to eternal misery in hell. It sounds a lot less noble when you phrase it like that, doesn’t it?

A few questions arise from this:

1. If you get an abortion is it a mortal sin if you believe that you’re doing the right thing by saving your child from the possibility of an eternity in a lake of fire being tortured forever and ever? Killing someone is usually wrong, but in this case it seems like it could possibly be justified. Similarly, breaking into someone’s house is usually wrong – but if you’re saving someone from a burning building, then it’s probably justified.

If you know that abortion is murdering your baby and one of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not commit murder,” and you intentionally procure an abortion, you have committed a mortal sin. It doesn’t matter if you try to rationalize your decision as an attempt to save your baby from hellfire; it is as wrong-headed as the Nazi notion of purifying the human race by exterminating all the Jewish people. The ends do not justify the means when the ends are absolutely insane, especially when, as I pointed out earlier, you have no way of knowing that the child you murder will be sent to heaven.

1. Even if you do risk your own eternal life by getting an abortion, wouldn’t the right thing be to get it any way? After all, you know the truth and can still be saved again. You understand that you can go to confession and return to the light of Christ. But your unborn child could grow up, totally reject the faith, and then voluntarily throw itself into eternal torment. Yes, there is a great deal of risk by committing a mortal sin – but at least you know you’ve saved your own child with absolute certainty.

**The OP was distressed precisely because he feared he was endangering the eternal life of his aborted child, not his own, so aborting your child, which could result in your baby being sent to hell, isn’t the right thing to do. Also, I would argue that if you knew the truth of the Church’s teachings you would not get an abortion especially for the reasons you outline here, and that nobody should have the flippant attitude towards faith of not worrying about sinning because you can be, to use your term, “saved again.” On a related note, an important part of Reconciliation is acknowledging how wrong you were and promising to do everything in your power to void falling into the sin again. If you attend Confession with the intent of committing the sin again, your Confession is not valid. As I said earlier, you can’t make a mockery of God’s justice. You can try, but, in the end, the joke will be upon you.

Additionally, by aborting your child, you are denying the child the chance to know, love, and serve God on earth, and possibly depriving them of an opportunity to go to heaven. That would be hard for any devout individual to justify.

Finally, I would emphasize again that you don’t have absolute certainty that your aborted baby will go to heaven. For all you know, your child could end up in hell because the baby wasn’t baptized. How would you like that on your conscience?**

1. Wouldn’t it be noble for someone to get many hundreds of abortions? She would be sending hundreds of souls straight to God, saving many of them who would have otherwise been sent to eternal agony. Surely her own eternal life would be in jeopardy, but look at all the good she’s done! God might even smile upon her noble self sacrifice.

**It wouldn’t be noble for someone to get hundreds of abortions. The point of sexual intercourse is to create life for the glory of God, not to destroy it. If God wanted people to take the sort of shortcuts you outline, He would not have created our planet and placed us upon it. Instead, He would have placed us in heaven or hell at the beginning of time. Life is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, and by stealing it from your unborn child, you are showing very little reverence for it. Somehow, I don’t think God will be smiling at that **

 

[mark_a]

In all fairness, none of you have really addressed my central point. If abortion sends the baby to Heaven, isn’t it ultimately a good thing? The only thing you can say is that murder is a potentially mortal sin, which I’ve already conceded. But isn’t eternal life more important than this temporal one anyway?

Our beliefs about abortion are similar to our beliefs about euthenasia. Ultimately, life should be God’s decision.

 

[ConstantineTG]

Several years ago my girlfriend of the time got pregnant, we decided that we should have an abortion (I was raised Catholic, but left the Church, my girlfriend never was). The baby was not baptised obviously, so will it go to heaven? I am still not a practicing Catholic, but I am reconsidering my views.

I know this might seem a strange thing to say, but I can deal with the idea of being an accomplice to a murder much or easily than I can deal with the idea that I have kept my child away from God.

I realize that my admition is not going to make me all that popular on this board, but if someone could at least set my mind at ease about my child’s soul, I’d really appreciate it.

No one can say for sure, but in scripture Jesus did say to let the children come to Him. I can’t imagine the baby being anywhere else, but at the same time realistically we can’t make such a conclusion. As you discern returning to the faith, take time to pray for the soul of the child and trust that God is all-merciful and all-loving.

 

[ConstantineTG]

In all fairness, none of you have really addressed my central point. If abortion sends the baby to Heaven, isn’t it ultimately a good thing? The only thing you can say is that murder is a potentially mortal sin, which I’ve already conceded. But isn’t eternal life more important than this temporal one anyway?

For the sake of argument, let us say that conclusively their souls do return to God in heaven. But we are always taught, the end does not justify the means. An evil act is an evil act even if the end would bring some good. Its like saying, lets kill all doctors who commit abortions so no one will commit abortion anymore. Justified? Of course not.

 

[youngblood]

I can’t believe I’m actually dignifying such foolish logic, but here goes. You say that someone could have many abortions, even knowing they are committing murder, then simply repent of it later because they are ultimately doing a good thing by sending the unborn to Heaven.

Well, there’s a Catch 22 to your logic. If you believe that you are doing a good thing by committing this murder, then why would you ever repent of it? It is impossible to find true repentance if you believe that your actions are justified. If it truly was justified, then you would not be guilty of sin.

Now, if you take it a step further and say that you are willing to condemn yourself to Hell in order to knowingly send many unborn babies to Heaven, then that puts you on par with a serial killer. One could use the same logic to go around murdering Christians in order to “do them a favor” and send them to Heaven. So, how far down that road are you willing to go?

God has a plan for our lives. The whole point of being Christian is not simply to get to Heaven as quickly as possible, but to live every second of our lives according to our purpose. When a life is ended prematurely by the willful act of another, it violates God’s plan.

 

[redroselover]

Exalt, this is my reaction . The original OP was looking for advice and comfort about a deep wound . You are trying to turn this into a philosophical discussion that really is getting off tract from the original post. I don’;t feel you are being very charitable. If you want that discussion why don’t you create your own post.about it.? I am sure you will get plenty of responses , arguments, all you want. It is a very interesting, important discussion, but the original OP is hurting about something that is very important to him.
To OP, our God is a loving God who can forgive anything. He longs to embrace you in his loving arms. Do not loose heart. This can be healed and as someone said you can use your experience to help others.

 

[al4gzuz2]

Dear Exalt,
You said, “In all fairness, none of you have really addressed my central point. If abortion sends the baby to Heaven, isn’t it ultimately a good thing? The only thing you can say is that murder is a potentially mortal sin, which I’ve already conceded. But isn’t eternal life more important than this temporal one anyway?”

A.) You are correct, Eternal Life is the goal and completion of the Temporal one. However, the way in which we exist in that Eternal Life, or the state in which we exist in eternity, depends upon how we live in the temporal life.

B.) Murder, and in this case, abortion, is always gravely illicit, and a mortal sin.

C.) Mortal sins are more than just "F"s on a report card. They mean a serious and grave separation from God’s love and life. Until one seeks full reconciliation through the Sacrament of Penance, and confesses all mortal sins with true contritionm, one remains in a state where if he or she died, he or she would not be able to dwell in an eternal life of heaven, but would be forever separated from God.

D.) The Church teaches that there is a particular judgment for a soul when someone dies. This means we meet the Lord as judge for how we lived our temporal life. Hell must exist if God is to be just and merciful, because we must have free will to be able to accept or reject his love and the life he offers us. We, therefore, have the final say over our souls in the sense that we either accept or reject God’s love in and through our lives and at our particular judgment.

E.) The Church does not have a final stance on the state of the souls of babies who have passed away (or have been killed) without Baptism. The Church does teach that Baptism is required for Heaven (the removal of the stain of original sin from the soul) but simultaneously that one would not be condemned if one had never sinned, and that God is merciful as he is just. Many of the responses above have affirmed that a child who has died without Baptism, even if aborted, is most likely with the Lord in Heaven, and I think that it is the most reasonable assumption.

F.) However, simply because God’s mercy is so great, it does not follow in any logic that bringing about another’s death is a good thing or a just thing. That logic runs very quickly into “why not blow up the planet, and let us all die… less time on earth for us to discover our sinful natures and live them out.” That is completely antithetical to the truth that God has revealed. We live to know Him. We are given life as a gift, and we are given free will to use that gift in good and evil ways. All people live with a mix of the good and the bad, and we must hope that we choose what is right and holy more often over what is wrong and evil. Murder, and abortion, are always evil. If that child who is killed is in Heaven, it is not YOU who secured his or her happiness by bringing about death. Rather, it is God’s mercy and love that offers that gift to the child. It is YOU who would have incurred mortal sin for your own soul and deprived another soul of the chance to live a life in greater and greater love of God.

G.) God does not “snuff” us out, though we often choose to use our free will poorly, and for evil things. Rather, he extends his love and mercy to us, even when we gravely sin, to accept our sincere apologies and promises to make amends and do penance. This is the kind of mercy and justice that human kind exists in. It is the same mercy and justice we are to learn from and imitate. Killing another as a means of hastening his or her “meeting the Lord” is proud, sinful, and refuses to acknowledge in all truth the humble state of a creature before a Creator. We are not masters over life and death, and it is not ours to take away.

 

[marray98]

i think from my nonpartisan thoughts i don’t like it but part of the reason some people go to hell if they don’t let Jesus in to their heart is one for their sins another is partly to pay for Adam and Eves disobeying God in the garden of Eden, but i think God would make an exception for unborn babies, but we cant always know the will of God.