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The broadcast showed pharmacists refusing to fill doctor prescriptions for Plan B because they claim it is an abortion pill. To them, even an undivided fertilized egg not yet implanted in a womb is a baby. This is an imposition of the pharmacist's religion on those whose religious beliefs are different.
The broadcast also described how Catholic hospitals in New York refuse to advise rape victims about the availability of Plan B despite state laws mandating such advice.
Many of these attempts to make Plan B unavailable will, of course, result in actual abortions.
28 November 2005
The movement to prohibit abortion brings together two distinct forces, those politicians who would wrap themselves in the blanket of religion to be elected and those religious individuals who would use the force of government — including the enactment of criminal laws — to accomplish what they cannot obtain through sermons from the pulpit.
Arguments for prohibiting abortion generally reflect the following:
A close analysis of these arguments indicates they reflect religious dogma that are not universally shared by all religions. In the following tabulation, these arguments are compared with Jewish philosophy. Note, however, that other religions share some of these principles with Judaism, contrary to the arguments against abortion.
| The Argument | Jewish Philosophy |
|---|---|
| Abortion is the murder of a baby.
(The use of the words murder and baby imply that a fetus is a human life.) |
For a life to be human, it must have a soul. The soul does not enter the body until the first breath of air at birth. Before then, a fetus is merely a potential human, not an actual human. Thus, abortion involves neither murder nor a baby.
Note that the soul does not necessarily enter the body even at birth. Thus, a stillborn baby or a baby who dies within the first weeks of life does not normally receive a Jewish funeral. Funerals for aborted fetuses conducted by anti-abortion activists are contrary to Jewish tradition; if the fetus is from a Jewish woman, such a funeral is an insulting intrusion by gentile dogma into that woman's life. |
| Abortion is the destruction of an innocent life.
(Characterizing a fetus as innocent implies that the mother is tainted with sin.) |
In many ways, Judaism has a quite different view of sin and innocence than Christianity. There are several problems in Jewish
philosophy with this characterization of a fetus as more innocent
than its mother:
|
| A mother's control over her pregnancy must be subordinate to the right of her baby to live. | A fetus's life is subordinate to its mother's life:
|
We must recognize that attempts to legislate against abortion are based on a desire to impose the dogma of some religions onto those religions that tolerate abortion. These attempts are not only intolerant but also arrogant in that they deny the legitimacy of the contrary religious philosophies of other individuals. Opponents against abortion must be made to recognize that they do not own the only true path to God's grace.
20 March 1997
Judaism is not alone in declaring abortion is not necessarily a sin. Representatives of the following religious organizations joined together as long ago as 1973 to establish the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) under the slogan "Pro-faith, pro-family, pro-choice":
The list above is only a sample of the relgious organizations that belong to RCRC.
28 November 2005
For papers by theologians who find a religious basis for choice, see Perspectives of Faith.
Link and title updated 4 November 2003
In preparation for the 2000 Republican National Convention, the Republican's Platform Committee met. As with prior presidential elections the Republican platform contains a plank vowing to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit all abortions, even in cases of rape or when the mother's life is at risk. One Platform Committee member stated that she was doing God's work to save babies.
Again, we see the issue at a very basic level. Politicians attempting to impose a specific religious belief on the rest of us. Prohibiting abortion is not doing the work of my God, who would rather see a women live than allow a pregnancy to kill her. And a prohibition would not save human babies, simply because fetuses do not yet have human souls.
30 July 2000
I have been questioned about my assertion that the soul does not enter the body until the breath of life. I quote from Responsa CARR 32-34 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents rabbis in Reform Judaism world-wide. This responsa (a rabbinic statement of religious principle in response to a question about Jewish belief) was actually about whether a cloned human can have a soul. However, this paragraph is quite clear in its broader scope, including its application to questions about abortion.
We should divide this question into two segments. First we must deal with the question of when a soul enters the human body. There are a number of midrashic and halakhic responses to this, but the practical halakhic implication is that a baby becomes a person only at the moment of birth. Therefore, if a woman in labor can not give birth, and her life is endangered, it is permissible to destroy the child as long as its head has not come out of the womb. Until that time it is considered an integral part of the woman, and so may be treated like any other limb of the body rather than a separate human being (M. Ohalot 7.6, Shulhan Arukh Hoshen Mishpat 425.2).
(The references at the end are to works of Jewish philosophy and practices several centuries old.)
24 November 2000
