A judge’s recent ruling is inspiring hopes that other states’laws against abortion could be overturned as well.
ed note–as always, lots of ‘must knows’ that every war-weary Gentile with a vested interest in his/her own future survival needs to understand about all of this.
Firsto, ladies and Gentile-men, the observant (no pun intended) reader will immediately take note of the fact that the word ‘Israel’ does not appear once in this story. Nor do the words ‘Zionism’, ‘Iran’, ‘Netanyahu’, ‘Smotrich’, West Bank’, ‘redemption’ ‘Gaza’ or any of the other ‘buzz’ words that are, at any given moment, swarming like flies within the apocalyptically-serious conversations taking place these days.
And despite these aforementioned buzzwords not appearing in the story below, nevertheless, the same ‘theme’ attached to them is as impossible to avoid noting as the smell of a rotting carcass in the summer sun, and it deals with, surprise, surprise, the Jews as a group and their gravitational pull for snuffing out innocent life.
Now, as it applies to the story below, nota bene the following–
The reader will note, (and especially those of the conservative Christian variety who are rightly opposed to the systematized ‘medical procedure’ of child murder) that it was not some ‘MOOZLUM’ group that agitated for and successfully negated the state of Indiana’s laws against abortion. Nor was it CAIR, the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran’s IRGC, or any of the other phantasms which the Jews have convinced Gentiles to fear.
It was, put in its simplest explanation, the Jews themselves, just as it always is…
And the obvious question to this is WHY, ladies and Gentile-men…
WHY would a group that LOVES, at every given opportunity, to claim credit for the commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ be on the front lines in making sure that innocent human beings, all the way down to unborn children, are murdered in what is the obvious and undeniable contradiction to that same ‘TSNK’ trophy that they LOVE to wear as a badge of honor like those stupid knitted pancakes that they wear atop their heads?
Quite simply, ladies and Gentile-men, because they don’t believe it, not for a minute, not for a second…
There MIGHT be a ‘commandment’ within their creed that says ‘TSNK’, but for every ONE of those ‘TSNK’ commandments that can be conjured up, there are a thousand others that COMMAND the exact opposite, just one infamous example of which is ‘reminded’ below, to wit–
‘Now go and attack Amalek and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to death all the men and women, the children and suckling infants, as well as their cattle, sheep, camels and donkeys…’ 1 Samuel 15:3
Now, just in case the last part somehow got ‘lost in translation’, we’ll repeat it here yet again ladies and Gents–
‘…Put to death all the children and the suckling infants…’
So, in other words, it is perfectly synonymous within the ‘protocols’ of Judah-ism, going all the way back to the very beginning of the devilish affair, to slaughter little children, whether it is in the killing fields of Gaza or in the extermination chambers of America (and elsewhere) in what is the systemized ‘medical procedure’ known as abortion.
And for those who are skeptical over the ‘legal’ argument that has now been successfully used in negating state laws prohibiting the deliberate murder of unborn human beings under the pretext that such laws violate the ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’ of today’s ‘Israelites,’ read the piece carefully where it is laid out in the Kristol-Clearest of language how indeed, Judah-ism is and always has been very ‘open minded’ on the issue of infanticide, since, after all, within the diabolically deranged Jewish brain, babies are every bit as much ‘Amalek’ as are the people of Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere.
The Jewish Daily Forward
When Elly Cohen chose to terminate her pregnancy in 2022, it aligned with her understanding of Jewish law that life begins at birth and not at conception.
Had she gotten pregnant just a few months later, she would not have had the choice of terminating the life growing inside her. She lives in Indiana, one of 13 states that enacted near-total bans on child murder following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
That reality stirred Cohen into action. She co-founded ‘Hoosier Jews for Choice’, a Jewish group that advocates for unrestricted abortion access, which joined five anonymous ‘women of multiple faiths’ in a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Their argument relied on a religious freedom law — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA — signed by former Indiana governor Mike Pence in 2015. It was one of many such state laws passed amid calls from some evangelical Christians to establish their legal right to not be forced to do business in a manner that violated their beliefs, such as baking a wedding cake for a gay wedding.
Hoosier Jews for Choice saw an opening for Jews to exercise their religious freedom under the same law, but for a purpose at odds with evangelical Christianity: to gain unrestricted access to abortion. Earlier this month, Judge Christina Klineman of Marion County Superior Court agreed, permanently blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion ban for plaintiffs with sincere religious objections.
Hoosier Jews for Choice is celebrating the ruling as the biggest legal win to date in support of the argument that abortion bans violate Jews’ religious freedom.
The group is hopeful that similar cases can build on the Indiana case’s success throughout the rest of the country.
The ruling could still be reversed: Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has appealed the decision, and the case is headed to the Indiana Supreme Court, where all five justices are Republican appointees.
Meanwhile, Klineman, elected to the bench in 2014 after winning a Democratic primary, has faced calls for her impeachment over her decision, in what U.S. Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) called ‘one of the most ridiculous rulings I’ve seen in a long time.’
But for Amalia Shifriss, who testified on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice in the lawsuit, the latest ruling is a positive sign that the law will be applied consistently. If religious freedom applies to Christians objecting to baking a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, she said, then it must apply to liberal Jews, too who seek to kill their unborn children.
‘RFRA should not just be for what some lawmakers see as the religious right,’ Shifriss told the Forward. ‘It should be for all religions.’
‘Perversion of the law’s intent’
In winning the right to an abortion, Hoosier Jews for Choice relied on a law passed by Pence, who would become Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate on the strength of his reputation as a stalwart advocate for evangelical Christians. Pence rose to national prominence based on his unwavering opposition to abortion — and his conservative leadership as Indiana governor.
Anti-abortion advocacy organizations — including Indiana Right to Life and SBA Pro-Life America — supported the law.
Back in 2015, the debate over RFRA centered on small-business owners that sought to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people. Eric Miller, a conservative activist who was in the room when Pence signed the law, wrote then that ‘Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!’
Massive backlash against the law led Pence to sign into law a clarification that businesses could not use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to deny services to people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
But the law itself remained on the books — ripe for abortion-rights groups to wield a decade later.
Now, a little over a decade after Indiana first passed RFRA, organizations that once supported the law’s broad application have changed their tune.
‘For the court to rule that taking the life of an unborn child is an exercise of religious freedom is deeply distressing, and a perversion of the law’s intent,’ Indiana Right to Life president Mike Fichter said in an online statement following Klineman’s March 5 ruling.
That shift has been part of a larger legal trend: Conservative Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom have long argued that the government must have a compelling reason to force someone to act against their religious beliefs — whether mandating vaccines, serving LGBTQ clients, or covering contraception in employee health care plans.
But when it came to religious plaintiffs who support abortion access, some on the Christian right didn’t think the same expansive view of religious freedom applied.
‘Indiana’s religious freedom laws were passed for the purpose of protecting religious practice, not to protect the ending of a human life,’ Alexander Mingus, executive director of the Indiana Catholic Conference, said in an online statement after Klineman’s ruling. ‘Religions that preach violence are not protected by religious freedom claims.’
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that has made its name by arguing religious freedom cases in front of the Supreme Court, also objected to the Jewish plaintiffs’ interpretation of RFRA. In 2014, Becket successfully argued in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that employers could refuse to cover contraception on religious grounds. Meanwhile, in the Indiana case, Becket filed a brief questioning the sincerity of the Jewish plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.
‘The case fails RFRA’s test for multiple reasons, including allowing people to join Hoosier Jews for Choice by filling out an anonymous Google form with zero requirement to actually agree with Jewish religious teachings,’ Lori Windham, senior counsel for Becket, said in a statement to the Forward.
Cohen disputed that characterization. She said that all members of Hoosier Jews for Choice were required to share their name and contact information, which it did not make public in order to protect members’ confidentiality. She added that group members who joined the lawsuit were asked to indicate whether they could connect their view on the abortion ban to their Jewish values and beliefs, and the vast majority of members did.
David Schraub, an associate professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who has written about the Indiana case, said that courts do assess whether a religious belief seems genuine. But according to Schraub, the bar for establishing sincerity is low — typically an issue only in cases clearly brought in bad faith. For instance, Schraub recalled a case in which a defendant, trying to avoid paying taxes, cycled through various legal arguments before ultimately inventing ‘the Church of Ayn Rand.’
The Indiana case is fundamentally different, Schraub said, given the long-standing religious grounding for unrestricted abortion based upon Jewish religious views.
‘They tried to argue that this was not a sincerely held religious belief, which I think was really quite disrespectful, because it flies in the face of a lot of evidence about what we know about how Jews conceptualize the relationship to reproductive freedom,’ Schraub said. ‘They’re just not willing to accept that there is such a thing as a sincere and genuine liberal religious tradition.’
Jewish beliefs, Jewish practices
A 2014 Pew Research poll found an estimated 83% of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all cases. That’s because Jews across all spectrums and denominations largely agree that life begins at birth, not conception. Sources in the Talmud say that in the first 40 days of pregnancy, the fetus is considered ‘mere water.’ Jews see the fetus as only a ‘potential life’ that only gains the legal status of personhood birth.
Still, Jews do not have monolithic views on abortion. Orthodox groups are divided, though couples generally consult rabbis on the matter and believe the choice to get an abortion should be governed by Jewish law, not personal choice.
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly supports the right to choose abortion in cases where ‘continuation of a pregnancy might cause psychological harm to the mother.’
Reform Judaism emphasizes complete bodily autonomy, with the view that ‘the decision to terminate a pregnancy is one that, in all circumstances, should ultimately be made by the individual within whose body the fetus is growing.’
Rabbi Sandy Sasso — one of three rabbis the ACLU asked to give expert testimony in the Indiana case, and the first woman ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism — told the Forward that the diversity of opinion within Judaism underscores the argument for challenging abortion bans.
‘That actually is just the point — there are different religious views,’ Sasso said. ‘The Constitution does not allow you, since there is separation of church and state, to enshrine one religious view over the other.’
Can religion and abortion coexist?
Shira Zemel, abortion access campaign director at the National Council of Jewish Women, is helping lead a national push to reframe ‘reproductive freedom as religious freedom.’
Each year since 2021, the Council has organized ‘Reproductive Shabbat,’ which aligns with the Torah portion from Exodus Parashat Misphatim. The portion says that if a man pushes a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry, he should pay a fine. But if any other damage results, the punishment should be according to the principle of ‘eye for an eye.’ The portion is often interpreted as evidence that Judaism does not view a fetus as having the same legal status as a person.
The group has also backed that argument in court, filing a brief with 21 other organizations of faith in support of the plaintiffs challenging Indiana’s abortion ban — and hoping similar lawsuits will build on that case’s success nationwide.
The legal pathway exists in many places: 29 states have their own versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, including at least 11 that severely restricted abortion after the Dobbs decision. According to Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, the same legal reasoning used in Indiana that killed the abortion ban in that state could feasibly be applied in any of those states.
Some legal challenges are already underway, including in Kentucky and South Carolina, where litigation is ongoing. Others have faltered: In Missouri, a judge upheld the state’s abortion ban after a group of interfaith clergy sued on religious grounds. In Florida, a Jewish-led challenge to a ban after six weeks of pregnancy fizzled out after Rabbi Barry Silver, who brought the case on behalf of his synagogue, died of colon cancer in 2024.
Zemel said she hopes the Indiana case can serve as not only a legal blueprint, but also as a sign of a broader cultural shift in how religion is understood within the abortion debate.
‘It’s incredible to me to see how this legal argument is bolstering what I like to think is a huge narrative shift,’ Zemel said. ‘For far too long, it’s been weaponized that religion and abortion can’t coexist, but we know that that’s not the case.’