Over the centuries, rabbis have addressed cases related to potentially deformed fetuses, pregnancy as the result of rape or adultery. According to the Jewish texts, there is more than one view.
by Associated Press , Israel Hayom Staff
Women dressed as handmaids protest against a bill banning nearly all abortions at the Alabama State House in Montgomery | Photo: AP/Mickey Welsh
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill on May 17 that criminalizes most abortions, threatening providers, such as Planned Parenthood with a felony conviction and up to 99 years in prison.
It was one of the numerous efforts across the United States to restrict access to abortion and challenge the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized the practice nationwide.
Six states have recently passed legislation that limits abortions to approximately six weeks after the end of a woman’s last period, before many know they are pregnant. Although the laws have not yet taken effect and several have been blocked on constitutional grounds, if enacted the legislation would prohibit most abortions once a doctor can hear rhythmic electrical impulses in the developing fetus.
Called “fetal heartbeat” bills, they generally refer to the fetus as an “unborn human individual” and recognize that human life begins at conception. This view is held by many religious individuals.
However, not all people who hold traditional or religious views on the matter agree and many get lost in the polarized “pro-life” or “pro-choice” debate.
While Jewish practices and laws are derived from biblical and Talmudic sources, “halacha” or Jewish law has been passed down for generations. Jews across different political as well as religious observant spectrums attribute various amounts of adherence to the traditional law.
Rachel Mikva, an associate professor of Jewish studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary, who has served as a rabbi for 13 years, says some Jewish texts argue that a fetus does not attain the status of personhood until birth.
Mikva lays out the issue of abortion in Jewish texts, below:
Although the Bible does not mention abortion, it does talk about miscarriage in Exodus 21:22-25. It imagines the case of men fighting, in a scenario where a pregnant woman has been injured in the process. If she miscarries but suffers no additional injury, the penalty for the man is a fine.
Since the death of a person would be murder or manslaughter and carry a different penalty, most rabbinic sources deduce from these verses that a fetus has a different status altogether.
The Mishnah discusses the question of a woman in distress during labor. If her life is at risk, the fetus must be aborted in order to save her. Once its head starts to emerge from the birth canal, however, it becomes a human life, or nefesh. At that point, one must try to save both mother and child. Jewish law prohibits setting aside one life for the sake of another.
Orthodox authorities allow abortion only when the mother’s life is at risk.
Some Jewish scholars point to a different Mishnah passage that envisions the case of a pregnant woman who was sentenced to death. The execution would not be delayed unless she has already gone into labor.
In the Talmud, the rabbis suggest that the ruling is obvious: The fetus is part of her body. It also records an opinion that the fetus should be aborted before the sentence is carried out so that the woman does not suffer further shame.
These teachings represent only a small fraction of Jewish interpretations, writes Mikva.
Over the centuries, rabbis have addressed cases related to potentially deformed fetuses, pregnancy as the result of rape or adultery.
In contemporary Jewish debate, there are stringent opinions that regard abortion as homicide – thus permissible only to save the mother’s life. Yet many in the Orthodox community have argued that abortion is equivalent to infanticide, while many in the Conservative and Reform communities have found it permissible for various reasons. Still, in the Orthodox community there exist some lenient interpretations which find justifications based on the woman’s well-being.
In the United States, all non-orthodox movements have statements that support aborting the fetus, while some Orthodox leaders have resisted anti-abortion measures that do not allow for religious exceptions.
@ Edgar G.:
You can only offer increasingly ad hominem attacks due to the creeping realization that you’re bereft of common decency. This strange inability to admit that telling a woman what she must do with her own body just to please you and you alone is tantamount to an m/f transsexual demanding government-issued free tampons- ludicrously illogical and laughably entitled.
But considering your obvious seniority in years (I’m a mere stripling of 63, and I’ll defer to the two or three decades you obviously have on me) I’ll pretend to believe that you only drink grape juice.
As for your Haggadah reference- please remind me from your familiarity with both the Seder and the character- what it is that The Foolish Son recites? Or better yet, ‘The one who wits not to ask’?
@ Arthur Wellesley:
FLUKEY- Your post was not logical. Just more of your crap, since you’re wrong in just about everything. I don’t drink alcohol, just don’t like the sharp taste At weekly Kiddush..grape juice…you should try it. .
I’m glad you know what a liver fluke is…probably explained to you by your dr. in his diagnosis. However, can I venture to expect that it was not hopeful….?
The picture of you eating liver flukes, as you suggest you do, confirms my opinion of you. I hope that at least you put salt on them.
My writings are only “peculiar” to you, because of your limited capacity for understanding. Which is why I made the above simple enough even for you. the son without mental capacity… in the Pesach Hagaddah. In case you don’t understand the reference, it’s in the “Mah Nishtnah Halaylah Hazeh”….. Get someone to explain it to you…
Edgar G. Said:
@Edgar G, I am perfectly aware of what a liver fluke is. And were I of that ilk, your own cirrhosis-ravaged specimen (and the cause of that ailment is easily apparent by the peculiarity of your various writings) would provide me with meagre nourishment.
Bear Klein Said:
@Bear Klein, if your eyesight, undoubtedly now diminished by your Portnoyesque behaviour during adolescence, were any better you’d have seen these three paragraphs in my very first post:
‘A council of senior female physicians should be convened to set an agreed consensus for gestational fetal viability and age of menopause.
Then a plebiscite for women only from age of majority to the physician-decided cutoff year should be held, only excluding those women in celibate religious orders because they’d have no practical interest in the result. In other words only those women affected by the decision would be allowed to vote.
The question to be voted upon is ‘Should abortion be allowed upon demand until the (whatever previously decided) week?’
Finished yet, ‘gentlemen’?
@ Arthur Wellesley:
“Poppa Bear”….a neat nickname, maybe at last, something you are good at. Let me dub you “The Iron Fluke” (fluke -as in schistomiasis, (re the liver, the producer of dung as you re doing now in your abhorrent posts).).
@ Arthur Wellesley:So if a woman decides one (1) day before birth to abort the baby yet unborn or in other words murder the baby, that is acceptable to you because she is a woman.
So murder by a woman is acceptable to you because she is a woman and has the ability to give birth. I will end this discussion with you for my part because clearly we have different moral standards on life and no amount of discussions would ever remedy the differences.
Bear Klein Said:
Bear Klein and also/especially Edgar G., when men can and do gestate babies, habitually and as an unremarkable matter of course, men can have a say in the actual laws regarding abortion, and that in regard to their fellow pregnant men only.
Not until.
@ Arthur Wellesley:I do not agree with you in principle because I do not believe that women should be the only decision makers on abortion.
Poppa Bear Klein, I’m delighted the machinations in which you indulged during your long-passed working life have provided you with such a comfortable retirement income that you’ve so much time to spend on this site.
That being said, please have someone with a very loud voice read my first post on this topic to you, and note that you’ve written more or less the same thing interspersed with your increasingly vituperative and ad-hominem attacks on me. (Having another look, I’m sure, will jog your ‘memory’.) In other words, you basically agree with me in principle, but for reasons known only to yourself won’t acknowledge it.
Then, contemplating what it means to be a true alte kakker, you should only have the loveliest of afternoon naps.
@ Arthur Wellesley:I am for protecting life and minimally this should be defined as any viable fetus and not allowing abortion afterwards unless the mother’s life is in danger. A fetus becomes viable after 22 weeks according to a Swedish Study.
I am for protecting life. This should be a minimally rational human goal. If one feels insulted by me saying this and saying that not only women have the right to decide who lives or dies so then one should be insulted. Not that I am for any abortion but taking the life of a viable human being even though it still in the womb is unconscionable by any moral human being.
@ Arthur Wellesley:
This is the biggest load of ordure I’ve heard lately… in fact since another of your revolting comments a month or two ago aroused my sense of responsibility to censure you..
Not discussing rape, the fact is, that pregnancy occurs because the woman either desires to take the chance, or allows it, having placed herself in a situation which she has been warned against from childhood..
And there is NO ONE to protect the helpless, and utterly blameless child about to be born,
@ Bear Klein:
No, Mr. (incredibly vicious insult of your choice) women get to make the decision because said uterus is theirs, and no woman should be forced to be an involuntary greenhouse.
And I’m getting (rudest adjective you can think of) annoyed at your ascribing sources of ideas to me when I’m pretty sure said sources are actually yours.
@ Arthur Wellesley You said
So only women get to decide who gets to live or die because they have a uterus? Very creative. Men in particular male physicians have no knowledge of what age a fetus is viable.
You watched one of the old Amazon movies and came up with this creative idea? Your last sentence is the best, “And for once women won’t be able to blame men for everything.”
Actually some women would blame men for leaving the hard decisions to women.
All laws are man-made, that is written and enforced by humans.
In my opinion, the legality of abortion is something only women can decide, because men cannot get pregnant.
A council of senior female physicians should be convened to set an agreed consensus for gestational fetal viaibility and age of menopause.
Then a plebiscite for women only from age of majority to the physician-decided cutoff year should be held, only excluding those women in celibate religious orders because they’d have no practical interest in the result. In other words only those women affected by the decision would be allowed to vote.
The question to be voted upon is ‘Should abortion be allowed upon demand until the (whatever previously decided) week?’
Then amend the Constitution accordingly to avoid spurious legal challenges.
And for once women won’t be able to blame men for everything.
I do not know if I concur with this article on Jewish Religion and abortion. It is not well written. My understanding in short is that abortion is highly discouraged. It is required if necessary to save the life of a mother. However, in cases such a pregnancy because of rape the final decision is up to the mother.
In Israel there is an organized NGO that tries to dissuade abortions and will help the mother with putting the baby for adoption if the event she does not want to keep the baby.
Chabad has an informative article on Jewish Law and abortion.
Full article at https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/529077/jewish/Judaism-and-Abortion.htm