Ritual practice for the spirits of the dead is anything but consistent, with a host of superstitions and theories about what is correct procedure. Even Lin, a lay worker at Linchi Temple, sees the process in largely psychological terms. "After a miscarriage or an abortion, if the woman feels guilty about the death of her child, she will begin to suspect baby spirits," he said. He added that the process is probably still a good thing for these women.
Wang Shu-fen (王淑芬), a social worker who works with unmarried women with abortion at The Garden of Hope (麗星基金會), a foundation dedicated to single mothers, agrees. "Although the superstition is not mainstream, if helping baby spirits contributes to the wellbeing of the women, it can also be used as a form of counseling," Wang said.
Although Wang and her colleagues do not promote such practice, they do not oppose if women desire it. Mrs Chen, a 48-year-old mother of two, expressed the other side of the argument.
"This is wrong," she said angrily. "The concept of redemption in this sense is unacceptable. You can't just burn some incense after you have killed somebody and expect everything to be fine again! Where is your morality?"
Chen, who has herself had an abortion due to economic concerns, says that although 20 years have passed, it is hard not to think about it. "You shouldn't merely visit the temple and expect to be forgiven," she said. But her husband thinks there is nothing wrong with "setting up a security net for the guilt and fear these women face," he said.
Lin-lin, a 22-year-old travel agent, sometimes feels the need of such a safety net, although not particularly religious. When speaking about her first aborted child, she admitted that, "I just feel so guilty.
"Even today, five years after my first abortion, I have nightmares about my first dead child," Lin-lin said. "Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling as if there is a kid sleeping beside me," she continued.
Lin-lin has never participated in a chao tu ceremony for the spirits of either of the two "children" she aborted. Going to a temple is too much time and trouble.
Several Taiwanese Web sites have solved this problem by creating online temples. For just NT$1,000, virtual shrines can be created on the site. On one such site, the "baby spirit" has all he will need: dinning hall, bathtub, fruit stands, and a candy store. Below, are a mailbox to which the mother can write letters to and a bucket where she can burn ghost money for him to buy things.
Kuo, when she heard of Web sites such as this one, said it was no more than a scam. But for the busy would-be mother in today's networked world, isn't it just a way of burning ghost money without any smoke?
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