Rosebud, brava!

I knew from an early age I didn't want children, so I was very careful not to get pregnant. I've never had to face the abortion issue directly. But I have an observation and a question.

My observation is that adoption is no panacea. The idea that unwanted children invariably find themselves in happy homes, with never a thought about where they came from or who rejected them is a myth. If you don't believe me, take a stroll through Bastard Nation or any other adoptees' rights site. And every day, it seems, there's another horror story about actual children--not zygotes or fetuses--being neglected, tortured, killed. Given a choice, they might have preferred to materialize in some other situation--or not to have been born at all.

Which brings me to a religious/philosophical question. For those of you who believe in an eternal soul (as I tend to), wouldn't any individual whose earthly journey was cut short through failure to implant, miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth just return to its spiritual home to await another opportunity? That seems like the logical course of events to me, but as far as I know (jump in here; I'm no religious scholar) no religion spells that out. Certainly there's nothing in the New Testament about it, or about abortion itself, as far as I know.