ed note–again, one of the most important pieces that should be read, and particularly by those hundred million + Christian evangelicals who believe they have ‘common cause’ with the ‘children of Israel’ based upon the (erroneous) belief that ‘Jesus was a Jew’ and that all that nonsense found in the Old Testerment viz ‘I will bless those who bless thee and curse those who curse thee’ was/is anything other than a diabolical script right out of 6,000 B.C. Jollywood meant to seduce the feeble minds of people into becoming ‘worshipers of the beast’ in future times such as today.
Nota bene those sections in red, but PARTICULARLY how the ‘justice’–the exact word used by our rabbi–of murdering children in utero was something that went all the way back to the ‘beginning of the affair,’ no pun intended, in the very beginning of the ‘Jewish Bible’, meaning the Torah or ‘Old Testerment’ as it is known by Christians, the book of Exodus to be precise, where an unborn child was de-humanized as mere ‘property’ and seen as a mere extension of the mother’s body, like an arm or some other appendage.
Also note how Jewish law, Jewish ‘ethics’ and ‘Jewish family values specifically mandates in the most grisley and gory detail the manner in which the child in utero is to be murdered–
…As long as the fetus’ head hasn’t emerged, it is permitted to go in and cut the fetus into pieces…
–Exactly the process that takes place in America to the tune of about 5,000 per day for the last HALF CENTURY, and yet brain-drained Americans, and particularly those of the Christian Evangelical stripe have the ‘chutzpah’, no pun intended, to adorn their cars, homes, etc with stickers and banners reading ‘God Bless America’ as well as their slavish genuflecting to the beast itself with their insipid and asinine quoting of ‘Genesis 12’ when talking about the followers of Judaism and of their totalitarian Hebrew state in the Middle East, ‘I will bless those who bless thee and curse those who curse thee’.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg for Moment Magazine
Question–Would a ban on Abortion deprive Jews’ of their religious freedom?
Yes. Abortion bans are predicated upon assumptions about when life begins that have specific Christian theological assumptions baked into them. Claims about when life begins are theological claims, and that impacts Jews who understand this biological process differently. The Texas law SB 8, which the Supreme Court recently declined to block, says you can sue people who aid and abet in an abortion, which is a liability for rabbis who, following Jewish law, will advise someone to get an abortion.
Question–Are there circumstances where Jewish law permits or even requires abortion?
In the simplest, most clear-cut case, Judaism mandates abortion in order to save the life of the pregnant person. That’s completely uncontroversial. Judaic law says that if someone is having difficulty in labor and you have to decide whose life to save, as long as the fetus head hasn’t emerged, it is permitted to go in and cut the fetus into pieces. Maimonides defined this as a negative commandment—to not take pity on the ‘pursuer,’ one who might take a life—and extended the permissibility of abortions in such cases.
Claims about when life begins are theological claims, and that impacts Jews and many others who understand it differently.
Many reasons to have an abortion are deemed halachically valid. The Talmud states that for the first 40 days after conception, the fetus is considered ‘mere water,’ which, as we count pregnancy today, is approximately 7-8 weeks of gestation—which is when about two-thirds of abortions take place. After that, the fetus is considered ‘a limb of its mother’ until birth. Exodus 21:22-23 establishes that the fetus doesn’t have the status of a person, since a man who causes a miscarriage by striking a pregnant woman is punished with civil damages paid to the woman’s husband.
More recently, in 1740, Yehudah Ibn Ayyash, head of the religious court in Algiers, is asked for a ruling or teshuva on the practice of women in the city who perform medication abortions, making the decisions themselves. He concludes it’s acceptable. Jacob Emden, writing around the same time, permits an abortion for a married woman who had an affair, and says abortion can be permitted even of a fully-formed fetus if there is ‘great need’ of saving the woman from ‘an associated evil that could cause her great pain.’ In 1913, another well-known authority, Mordechai Winkler, equates protecting mental health with protecting physical health as a reason for abortion. Ben Zion Chai Uziel says an abortion may be acceptable ‘even for a slim reason, such as to prevent disgrace.’ This has been mainstream halacha for a long time.
Question–Does Jewish law support a pro-choice position, then?
A better term for it might be abortion justice. We Jews are commanded to pursue justice and to create a just society, so working to make sure abortion is accessible to everybody is critical. Our tradition believes in creating a world where every child who is born is supported and cared for. In a broader sense, economic justice and racial justice are Jewish values, and access to abortion is intertwined with them. It allows people to have dignity and the possibility of changing their own lives.
What would happen to those cases in a post-Roe v. Wade environment?
Some suggest a religious exemption for Jews. But it’s not that simple. A religious accommodation might help a tiny percentage of Jews who know how to fill out the paperwork and have the privilege and the access and the connections to say, ‘I’m Jewish enough to get an abortion.’ But even then, I’ve been hearing stories of people in Texas with ectopic pregnancies being advised by doctors to drive 10 or 12 hours to neighboring states to get an abortion, because doctors in Texas are so terrified of performing abortions and getting busted. Technically, the Texas law has a provision that if your life is in danger, as it is from an ectopic pregnancy, you can have an abortion. But people are nervous about losing their medical licenses, so unless you’re bleeding out in the ER, they won’t do it. If you begin banning abortions, this is the world we’ll have. People will die, and we Jews have a profound Jewish obligation to prevent that—for everybody.
Are Americans debating abortion within a Christian framework?
It’s deeply Christian, in ways I think people haven’t fully absorbed. People, even some Jews, have become so used to certain kinds of language and rhetoric that we don’t even necessarily see the influence of evangelical Christian concepts.
What would a Jewish framing of the abortion debate look like?
Are we preventing unnecessary suffering? Are we centering people’s agency and dignity? Are we each created in the divine image and provided with the agency and dignity to make our own call on how to navigate the body we are issued? Or does somebody else get to decide for us?
Counterpoint by Rabbi Shlomo Brody
Question–Are there circumstances where Jewish law permits or even requires abortion?
There’s widespread consensus that women may and sometimes must have an abortion when their life or health is in danger. The clearest indication that we don’t attribute full human status to a fetus is that feticide is not treated like homicide in the Bible. A murderer can be subject to the death penalty while a person who kills a fetus is not, and Exodus 21 seems to punish such an action via tort law. It’s bad, but far from the equivalent of killing someone.
Question–Does Jewish law support a pro-choice position, then?
If by pro-choice we mean the woman has full autonomy over her body and can decide at will not to keep a pregnancy, I do not think Jewish law supports that. Jewish law recognizes a special status for a fetus in that it is not considered a full-fledged human being, but Jewish law does not share the Catholic view that full human life begins at conception, and this allows for some flexibility to permit abortions in certain circumstances.
What would happen to those cases in a post-Roe v. Wade environment?
If Roe v. Wade gets fully overturned, which I doubt will happen, presumably abortion then goes back to the states. Many will preserve very liberal abortion laws. Others will be more restrictive, but I predict they will still permit abortions when the mother’s life is in danger, and probably make exceptions for rape or incest or other cases where Jewish law mandates or permits abortion.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the Jewish community must introduce nuance into the debate.
A stricter ban, such as a personhood amendment granting the fetus full human rights from conception, would be different and unwise. The Jewish community would need to work against that because it would create ambiguities about the nature of a fetus that could indeed harm our ability to get an abortion when necessary. Maybe I’m naïve, but I think it’s highly unlikely that the court or the legislatures would do that. America has a deep-rooted tradition of respecting religious practices. I hope and anticipate that whether in the Supreme Court or state legislatures, those with well-grounded arguments that their religion permits some abortions would have access to exemptions.
It’s unfortunate that the ‘religious perspective’ as portrayed in public discourse is the Catholic or Southern Baptist view that life begins at conception, which is not the traditional Jewish view. But abortion also shouldn’t be framed as a religion-and-state issue. Many (not all!) on the pro-life side are inspired by religion but believe their views on abortion are also rooted in reason or philosophy. It would be best if we turned the conversation more toward what’s the best way to decide among competing visions of life and liberty in a diverse and pluralist society. In general, in democratic societies, that’s done through the legislatures.
What would a Jewish framing of the abortion debate look like?
As with much political discourse, the abortion debate is polarized. Judaism offers a more nuanced perspective. Polling has regularly shown Americans are much more conflicted on this issue than the extreme positions that are portrayed. They may think abortion is sometimes reasonable, without saying it should be taken lightly or allowed in all circumstances. They may recognize a fetus is not a full-fledged human being but is still clearly something we care about. At the same time, Jewish law does not believe life begins at conception and does not see feticide, even late in pregnancy, as equivalent to homicide. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the Jewish community must try to introduce some of this nuance into the debate.