How could an abortion cause infertility in a witch?

Question

Orgone is the natural life energy of the cosmos and the lifeforce which allows the body to function. It is used to perform spells, and constantly regenerates after use at different rates for an individual. Orgone can also be used with other materials to create familiars, translucent creatures that act as servants. These familiars represent a reflection of the person's soul, and vary in size and shape. However, the materials needed to create these creatures are rare and expensive. Even after they have been gathered, the ritual is difficult to perform. There is however, an alternative to this method: the use of a soul that hasn't been completely formed.

During the third trimester, a witch can use a ritual which aborts her pregnancy and uses the remains of the resonant soul to form a botchling. These pitiful creatures are malformed, misshapen fetuses made with half a soul. They are caught in an intangible state between life and death which float and hover over their creator, and serve as spies and counselors. A botchling is bound to the witch and cannot stray more than 100 yards from them. They can turn invisible at will and cannot be affected by anything on the physical plane.

The spell causes no damage to the witch physically or biologically. However, the witch is unable to have more children mystically, and only one of these creatures can be created during a lifetime. How can this be the case?

Answer 1

Becoming a mystical unborn is a Fate Worse than Death (TV Tropes warning), worse than lifelong physical and emotional abuse, torture, or enslavement. Tethered to life but never living. Unable to interact with the world physically, they'll never feel a loving touch or be able to do any good deeds. They can't even lash out at the cause of their horrible state, nor leave her side. They don't have any hope because even when the witch dies they will remain tethered to her soul forever, neither living nor dying.

After seeing the horrible things the witch did to her own unborn child's soul, no other spirit will trust her to be their mother. They figure it's better to not get a body at all than to be trapped with that monster for all eternity. No future pregnancy will result in a viable child because no soul will enter a developing body in the witch's womb. Without a soul, the fetal body won't continue developing past a point and becomes a miscarriage.

Perhaps a witch with a mystical unborn has a change of heart some time later. Could she release the mystical unborn, allowing its ethereal body to die and its soul to depart? With no cursed creature tethered to her, would she once again be able to have children, or would souls remember her evil deed and not trust her still? Could she go through a process of repentance or penitence to regain trust and thus be able to have children again?

Note this works whether souls are reincarnated or whether they exist before they're physically born but only live one mortal life on this plane of existence.

In your world souls are reincarnated? If so, a mystical unborn remains trapped, tethered to the witch's soul as it enters its next life. The child who was a witch in a past life would be haunted by the mystical unborn without understanding why. If a girl, she would likely be infertile for the exact same reason she was infertile in her past life. A spell or ritual (exorcism, anyone?) could release the mystical unborn, allowing it to move on to its next life as well as freeing the witch-in-a-past-life from its curse. Otherwise the mystical unborn continues to haunt the former witch throughout multiple lives. Or perhaps as divine punishment/justice for her evil, the mystical unborn's soul lives all the witch's next lives in her place, and the witch does the haunting instead, until the two are unbound.

In your world do souls exist before birth, live a single life, and then move on to some other state or plane of existence? In that case both the witch and the mystical unborn become trapped in a sort of limbo forever. Because the mystical unborn never got to live even a short meaningless life, it cannot go on to the next life. The witch would normally be able to move on to the next existence after her death, but because she is bound to a spirit which isn't ready and able to go with her, she has effectively trapped herself. Neither is able to disconnect themselves from the other, so the two are trapped between worlds until a ghost hunter encounters them and undoes the binding spell, or until long after the sun burns out.

You ask, "why would a witch do something that would trap her soul for eternity?" Simply because she - like everyone else - doesn't really know what happens after death, or doesn't care. Her choices are based on what she gets out of her actions in this life, and having a mystical unborn does have many advantages while she's still alive.

Answer 2

To get pregnant again, you must finish your prior pregnancy.

The woman cannot have another pregnancy because she has never finished the prior one. It is not because she has been physically damaged in any way. It is because the mystical unborn has not been born. The connection between mother and fetus remains intact; from the OP "the unborn is bound to the witch". It no longer resides inside her body (although that could be a possibility), but the mystic connection these witches use to magically nourish their pregnancies continues to nourish and sustain the mystical unborn.

The connection cannot be severed. Methods have been devised to incapacitate or otherwise deprive a witch of the services of her mystical unborn but the unborn does not die; it cannot die because it is not alive.

A question is what happens to the mystical unborn if the mother witch dies. One might posit that just as in life the mother witch tethers the unborn to the material plane, one her death the unborn serves as a tether, keeping what remains of her energies tethered to whatever limbo the unborn inhabit.

Answer 3

A mystical unborn is bound to the witch and cannot stray more than 100 yards from them.

and only one of these creatures can be created during a lifetime.

The womb is a material component for the spell. Once spent, the creature is bound to the witch by a hundred yards long mystical umbilical nooze.

She may not be pregnant physically, but she is magically. Therefore she cannot become pregnant again.

Answer 4

Keeping the creature "alive"

In order to keep the creature the witch has to donate orgone to the creature. If the witch tried to conceive another child the creation would drain more orgone than the witch is able to regenerate there by killing the child while only being only a few cm in size (or even smaller) which disables the unborn child to become another creature.

Answer 5

The process of creating the mystical unborn makes irrevocable changes to the witch's reproductive system. You can yank the fetus out at that late stage and create this pitiful creature instead, but the womb was not designed for that and is altered in the process. For example, some part of the womb -- necessary to keep a fetus alive inside the body -- can be extracted from the witch and merged into the created being to provide ongoing sustenance to the creation. Further, this is a permanent change, not the womb being temporarily allocated to sustaining the being, so if the being dies, she can't become pregnant again.

Answer 6

• The "mystical unborn" releases some sort of chemical (perhaps a waste product) that kills enough tissue in the womb that normal implantation of an embryo can no longer occur.

• The "mystical unborn" releases some sort of chemical that travels up the Fallopian Tubes and attacks the ovaries.

• The "mystical unborn" takes part of its mother's womb with it, either by eating it or by incorporating it into its body. The process of giving birth, then, effectively becomes a birth and a hysterectomy.

Answer 7

If it doesn't affect her physically or biologically, then the only explanation would be that the magic that binds the "mystical unborn" to her is also a curse of sorts. Magic can have its price, after all, so the price for creating one of these abominations would be the loss of future reproduction. Or, maybe the magic "freezes" her reproductive cycle so that, from her body's perspective, she's still pregnant, so ovulation doesn't occur. That's the whole idea behind the birth control pill, after all. Even though the mystical unborn isn't in the woman, her body thinks it's still gestating inside her, so it acts accordingly. A third option is that creating the mystical unborn fast-forwards the witch straight to menopause. (So now she's sterile and she's experiencing hot flashes.)

Answer 8

It turns out that Orgone is more complicated than originally thought...

...and there are a few kinds of it (let's go with colors). You need green Orgone to live, but birth is relying on the red Orgone.

It turns out that the red Orgone is stored in the Placenta, and after a birth, a witch eats it (or makes an elixir out of it) in order to regain the lost energy and give another birth.

However, when a mythical unborn is created, the magical energy is transferred into it from the placenta. This explains why it has those impressive magical powers, but unfortunately it makes it impossible for the witch to regain the red Orgone.

You could also make this red Orgone contain a certain "wavelength" or "phase", which would explain the bond between the mother and the child - the red Orgone resonates with other Orgone of the same Phase. In case of the mythical unborn the response is actually so strong (because fetus absorbed the red Orgone from the mother) that the creature has to appear in proximity of the Witch.