Anonymous asked this question on 5/4/2000:

"Spirit" prompted me to re-read "Dianetics: the modern science of mental health." It only takes two days (it's a fast read), and while reading it I highlighted the portions of what I thought were dubious, absurd, and just plane wrong.

What I do not understand, and my question is: why was Hubbard so fixated upon abortion and the "immorality" of pregnant women? The book did not make it clear: Are the majority of engrams caused during pregnancy?

Thank you for your answers.

Stan

desertphile gave this response on 5/4/2000:

Hi. You are certainly not the first to wonder at Hubbard's obsession with abortion. His obsession had to do with a great many things, in my opinion. His Satanism, his opium consumption, his drinking, his phenobarbitol addiction, and his insane hatred of women. When I read "Dianetics" I got the impression that he suffered from the delusions of grandure that is epitomized in the Chronos myth of a terrible father consuming his children so that he will not be supplanted and removed from his seat of authority by a son / rival. Perhaps Hubbard feared rivalry from a son so much that obsession with abortion was one symptom of that fear.

Most of the "engrams" do not come from pregnany: they come from "implant stations" on Mars and Venus. See my FAQ on "Xenu."

The following is extracted from an interview Hubbard's son (L. Ron Hubbard Junior) gave to "Penthouse Magazine" in the early 1980s. He reports that his father's obsession with abortion is due to Satanic rituals, which given Hubbard's drug addiction and dabbling in Growlyan occultism, may have very well been the case. Hubbard's son was certainly in the best position to testify on the issue!

http://home;worldnet.fr/gonnet/penthouse-eng.htm

PENTHOUSE The International Magazine for Men/June 1983?

[...]

What he did, reaily, was take bits and pieces from other people and put them together in a blender and stir them all up --- and out came _Dianetics!_ All the examples in the book --- some 200 "real-life experiences" --- were just the result of his obsessions with abortions and unconscious states... In fact, the vast majority of those incidents were invented off the top of his head.

[...]

Another important idea was the creation of what they call embryo implants --- of getting a satanic or demonic spirit to inhabit the body of a fetus. This would come about as a result of black-magic rituals, which included the use of hypnosis, drugs, and other dangerous and destructive practices. One of the important things was to destroy the evidence if you failed at this immaculate conception. That's how my father became obsessed with abortions. I have a memory of this that goes back to when I was six years old. It is certainly a problem for my father and for Scientology that I remember this. It was around 1939, 1940, that I watched my father doing something to my mother. She was lying on the bed and he was sitting on her, facing her feet. He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over the place. I remember my father shouting at me. "Go back to bed!" A little while later a doctor came and took her off to the hospital. She didn't talk about it for quite a number of years. Neither did my father.

Penthouse: He was trying to perform an abortion?

Hubbard: According to him and my mother, he tried to do it with me. I was born at six and a half months and weighed two pounds, two ounces. I mean, I wasn't born: this is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me. It happened during a night of partying --- he got involved in trying to do a black-magic number. Also, I've got to complete this by saying that he thought of himself as the Beast 666 incarnate.

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Satanism?!