Abortion and Jewish Public Policy

Journal of Religion & Health, 1980

Women in Judaism, 2013

The controversy between the Ultra-Orthodox Halakhic decisors Moshe Feinstein (USA) and Eliezer Waldenberg (Israel) is still authoritative for the current debate about abortion in Jewish medical ethics. There are two major ways of explaining the differences: one rather referring to the Halakhic argumentation, the other to the social background of the decisors. This study combines these two approaches to develop a more balanced interpretation: First, the pro-life and pro-choice stances in the general public are described with reference to socio-empirical research. The results of this research hint at the influence of two perspectives, one focusing on the fetus, and the other rather on the woman. The analysis then concentrates on the Halakhic controversy to describe similar differences in this field. Finally, the decisors’ different situations in both states receive closer inspection. This sheds light on how their social situatedness could have affected their decisions. This interdisciplinary approach eventually contributes to a better understanding of both Jewish theology and social research.

Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, 2023

Background This opinion piece looks at the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and then compares the law on abortion in the USA to the law in Israel on reproductive medicine in general. The Dobbs decision validated a Mississippi state law that restricted access to abortion, while overruling the landmark precedent of Roe v. Wade on women's constitutional right to safe abortion. It declared that the US constitution does not confer upon women any right to abortion, whether pre-or post-viability, sending shockwaves throughout the world. It also had an immediate effect on women's reproductive health in the US. Main body Women's right to reproductive freedom and to make decisions about their lives and their bodies is key to their hard-won equality. Still, abortion remains in ongoing controversy worldwide with legal barriers that impact upon the most vulnerable. In Israel, abortion is relatively available, accessible, affordable, and acceptable, in both law and practice. This is because of the lenient and nuanced stance of rabbinical authorities in the Jewish law tradition. This stance, together with Israel's post-Holocaust biblical culture of "be fruitful and multiply", also underlies its high rates of medically assisted reproduction for the treatment of infertility, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis of fertilized eggs. Women's bodies mediate all these repro-genetic technologies, in most cases for the benefit of others, not because of their own health needs. There is also concern about global practices and market forces that objectify women's bodies, exploit women and are harmful to their health, wellbeing, and dignity, carrying on outdated patriarchal patterns. Conclusion Reproductive health policy ought to be based on an ethic of care and responsibility first and foremost for the women, as well as the children they choose to bring to life, in the spirit of the Jewish tradition that her life is of greater value than the fetus'. Women deserve control of their bodies and their lives and respect for the choices they make to the best of their judgment, which when it comes to abortion are mostly hard ones. They have a right to reproductive choice, freedom, autonomy, and dignity. The views expressed in this perspective are those of the author.

American journal of medical genetics, 1982

2016

As technological advances increase, the frameworks of our existence become further called into question. Contemporary bioethics still tirelessly grapple with issues regarding the end and beginning of life. However there is great need to extend beyond the horizons of Western secular ethics and be able to create inter-religious dialogue surrounding these issues. The debates on abortion often become forcibly polarized in public discourse which severely hinders the development of an analytical and dialogical space which speaks not only to the content of opinions, but to the contexts of historical, theological, and philosophical traditions which have informed and shaped the way abortion is perceived and handled by both individuals and institutions. This paper seeks to deconstruct the abortion debate within both Orthodox Jewish and Catholic tradition in order to locate the fragile points of friction and tend to the hermeneutics of each tradition in order to understand the way in which ethics is formed and deformed within them. In doing so a new dimension to inter-religious dialogue and ethical relations between traditions is formed that extends deeply into questions of embodiment, human nature, ensoulment, and the horizons of life and death as necessary variables to interact with in ethical reasoning across religious traditions in a pluralistic society.

This essay will examine the extent to which the works of Jacques Derrida can be applied to the Old Testament to justify Orthodox Jewish thinking concerning abortion. Due to the limited scope of this essay, only the verses Exodus 21:22-23 from the Tanakh will be examined. This essay will argue that these verses can justify Orthodox Jewish thinking on abortion; however, it cannot be assumed that this is the only interpretation of the text.

Islam and Christian - Muslim Relations, 2005

This article contends that the problem of abortion is essentially philosophical rather than jurisprudential. Although much debate derives from diverse, and sometimes contradictory,rulings by different legal systems on the act of terminating the life of a foetus and from varied responses to these rulings, it is necessary to ask about the reasons for these legal rulings and moral responses. Four contending theories of abortion, emphasizing respectively the concepts of sanctity of life, free will, value of investment and conscious entity, are briefly outlined and criticisms of each theory noted. Analysis of the logical structure of the theories and identificationof presuppositions underlying them confirm the claim that the problem is essentially philosophical, which indicates the need for debate in the philosophy of values and in metaphysics.

African Journal of Politics and Administrative Studies

This research work argues that induced abortion as a means of birth control is morally unacceptable. Although, the question of abortion is being considered as a means of birth control but this position not only has generated much controversy from antiquity to the postmodern era, it has also politicized many democratic societies. Proponents of induced abortion couch it in terms of gender equality and human right of women to choose or what to do in matters that their body. This too has presented us with political and ethical quandary. The problematic as conceptualized in the title is embedded in moral questions implied in these questions, among others, regarding the morality of induced abortion and the politicization of the ethical question. What makes one’s choice right or wrong? Is it one’s choice that makes an act right? Isn’t it first, that an act is judged right according to certain ethical norms that makes the action morally justified? Thus, some ethicists and pro-abortion advoc...

2021

Since the Supreme Court grounded the right to an abortion in a constitutional right to privacy, legal and societal debate has continued around the status of a fetus in utero, a woman’s countervailing claims, and the interests of states and society as a whole. As American courts have faced an issue that intertwines legal, moral, and philosophical questions, so too the halakhic process confronts analogous complexities. The main line of Jewish tradition makes a much-needed contribution to the discussion of abortion. Without sharing the view that the fetus is from conception fully a person, it stops short of a complete dismissal of the value problem in destroying a fetus. However, whatever value attaches to “potential life,” the primary concern lies with the woman. She exists. Her voice and her needs must be heard. And her life, (no matter how slim her chances of survival), health, and mental well-being come first