How can a devotee doctor counsel patients especially women who seek medication to terminate or prevent pregnancy?

So if if you are involved in the in the medical profession and how to counsel women, especially who who want to prevent pregnancy or terminate pregnancy quite often because, say, they have had already a pregnancy and now soon they’re becoming pregnant. Sometimes they take emergency things which are risky for them. And, often the mainstream method is to, talk about more long term, more safe methods of contraception. But from a perspective of scripture, as we have learned, You know, if both of short term or long term, both are not recommended. So what can we tell them?

The people who come to us. I’ll talk about this at three different levels. First is that understanding our role. Second is understanding society. And third is understanding the person who is coming.

So our role is that we play multiple roles or we put on as we say multiple hats. So we are devotees. That’s our personal spiritual journey. But we have particular roles in society. So if somebody may be aware of that, say, you mean the medical care provider, you’re a doctor.

So how much should we bring our spirituality into our workplace? In a that is a question which everybody has to negotiate. Everybody who is doing a spiritual role are playing a professional role while being a spiritualist. And, I wouldn’t say there is any one zero kind of, understanding about this. Ideally speaking, devotees shouldn’t be involved in professions where the four executive principles are directly being broken.

So, for example, if a devotee is a gynecologist, and a major source of their earning comes from abortions, so what do they do? In the Bhaktiand Hospital, we have a system that it’s a it’s a hospital run by the devotees in Mumbai, where we have a system where we don’t do any abortions, and all the, consultants who come there have to promise that they are themselves not going to do abortion in the private practice also. So that’s where it’s it’s called culture compliance. And some people accept that, some people don’t, and then they can’t work over there. So this is where and you could say the larger so for somebody who’s a gynecologist and becomes a devotee is going to be a serious challenge.

But that’s their only source of livelihood, and they really can’t manage, then it’s up to them. So if a devotee is running a restaurant which sees non non vegetarian food, they may not be able to come out of the restaurant immediately. So this is largely my point I’m making is by this example, it’s largely individual decision, how much we bring our spiritual values into our workplace. When the workplace culture, the workplace expectations are quite different. Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita chapter that that every endeavor is covered by fault, just as fire is covered doesn’t work.

So we cannot avoid certain problems in workplaces. So ideally speaking, devotees can try to choose professions where these tensions are as less as possible, but we cannot avoid. At the first point, individually, we have to take responsibility to decide. Now as far as society is concerned, we we we wanna practice, but we deal with larger society. A larger society has certain policies, certain mainstream concerns.

And, can social policy be changed? It does seem that the world is not going in that direction at all. And, while in the West now, there is an increasing concern about depopulation, they feel the population is decreasing rather than concerned about population exposure which is there in India. Still, the problem is still that that has not led to any translation in terms of emphasis on on natural self control, basically. So overall, the mainstream society is not encouraging this, whether it comes in the culture where there is so much sexual glamorization and there is increasing acceptance of, of extramarative, premarital sex.

Sexuality is becoming more and more prominent in society. And, by end, Movies don’t openly at least in India, I don’t think they openly champion abortion, but, I don’t think it’s a top topic that is stubborn. It is something which is understood. It happens, and people don’t talk about it. In the West, it is glamorized.

There are Instagram where there are whole pages and this, shout your abortion. So So women come for it. It’s a matter of pride. I did this abortion. So it’s a quite a crazy thing over there.

So we can’t change the way society is going. And, we sometimes had to make the best of a bad bargain and do the best we can within the limitation that’s society has for us. So my third point is that with respect to people who are coming, but they have an immediate need, and we need to address that need. Now if we have a relationship with them, we can, we can, talk about talk to them about something spiritual. But often, self control, or that kind of thing is not something which gives the decision of only one partner.

So both partners, if only they’re coming and if they are understanding, then it is possible. And for many people, it seems to be like an intrusion into their private life. Who are you to tell us about that? So sometimes trying to do that can backfire if they complain to our authorities and, they those we face professional trouble because of that. So if we can, if we have a relationship, say, if we are a little older and, people respect us to some extent because of age and then thought, then it’s possible to give that kind of advice.

And how do what extent is practical that people will decide? But as as devotees, we all have to choose our battles. Choose our battles means decide where we want to focus our energies. So ideally speaking, you might say that even through our profession, we should try to be preaching. And some people can do that in some ways.

Somebody might have tuition classes. And while they’re teaching professional subjects, they may also have a place where they conduct special talks or they create a special ambiance over there. Some professions might allow preaching a little more easily. Somebody’s a mental health counselor. And they are quite open that I’m going to make a fundamental counseling from a yoga perspective, Vedic perspective, Indian non assistance perspective.

And then that could work. But some professions may not, make it that easy. But make it so may make it much more difficult. So in those situations, it’s important that we see our profession primarily as a source of livelihood. And, you know, quantity, that’s a society life of source of respectability in society.

And based on that, we focus on our, sharing sharing of Krishna consciousness through other forms. So if suppose we get to a very begin very influential position in the future where we can influence that, that’s okay. But in general, in a professional role, we need to provide what the profession requires first, and then spirituality afterwards. Say if somebody, Sachin Tendulkar, or now he’s retired or Virat Kohli, he’s also retired. I suppose, suppose in World Cup final.

And this person has become a devotee, and India loses the World Cup finals. And in the post match interview, suppose he’s the captain, he’s asked, why did India lose? And he replies that, oh, with loss, all this is just temporary. Ultimately, she’ll just chant the aggression and be happy. That person will be destroyed on social media.

Oh. You cannot actually imagine a worse form of antiquity through a statement that is actually philosophically true. But the point is if you’re a cricketer, you you’re being paid and celebrated for being a cricketer, then you have to be a cricketer. And on top of that, if you have your spirituality, you can talk about it. But don’t let don’t use your cricketing preach your spirituality at the cost of the platform.

So if somebody succeeds in winning the World Cup, and then he says that, Yay, Shri Krishna, this is Krishna’s not his God’s mercy, this is Krishna’s mercy on me. Or he says that because I was chanting and that that kept helping me to stay cool or something like that. That could work. But our spirituality in our profession should be above and beyond our professional competence. Even not everybody can have professional excellence, but we all need to have at least professional competence.

That’s, that’s the broad principle. So to summarize, the individual level, how much to bring our spirituality into our profession is a personal decision that has to be taken on Deshikaal Patra. When we live in larger society, we can’t change the way society is functioning. Although if there are some trends of something changing, then we can work with those trends. For example, in America, some places they have tried to not ban abortion, but ban late term abortion.

And but then that also has backfired. And, the Republican party is not really pushing that. So it may be, but we cannot change the way larger society works. So in our profession, we choose our battles. We see how much we can bring spirituality into our profession, in the specific profession, but that should be over and above the professional competence, not at the cost of it.