Posted on 03/14/2004 1:02:27 AM PST by ambrose
On abortion, a Jewish compromise
If you are looking for a good compromise on the difficult question of abortion, don't look to Roe v. Wade but to Israel. There is only one intelligent, just, ethical position on abortion and it happens to be the Torah viewpoint.
Unfortunately, over 95 percent of Jews and non-Jews are totally ignorant of it.
Scholars on the Left will attest that the Bible, Israeli law and the US Constitution are definitely pro-choice and protect a mother's health. Those equally learned on the Right will swear that these same great documents uphold the pro-life position and protect children.
How can so many knowledgeable people totally contradict each other? In reality, the same Bible both sides cite contains a sensible, compassionate solution that contradicts the standard pro-choice and pro-life positions.
Most people seem to think there are only two sides. The pro-choice position says that a woman can do whatever she wants with her body. This includes ear piercings, haircuts, face lifts, rhinoplasty, wart/hair removal, and fetus removal. In this view, the status of the unborn fetus is like that of skin, hair or excess cartilage.
This is the logic of the pro-choice position, but even those who hold it, except perhaps die-hard activists, would not truly place a fetus and a wart in the same category.
The pro-choice side must ask itself, is destroying an unborn fetus the moral equivalent of cosmetic surgery or a haircut?
The pro-life position holds that a fetus is a full life, so destroying it is murder. Staunch pro-lifers consider abortion the equivalent to the horrific crimes of Charles Manson, Palestinian suicide bombers, and even the Nazis. Some right-wing religious zealots have even coined the phrase "Silent Holocaust" to describe their horror.
This position places pro-lifers into an even more difficult and frightening category. If they are sincere, they are knowingly permitting mass murder to occur on a daily basis, and are possible accomplices to murder.
IMAGINE IF someone were to go into nursery schools daily to murder 20 children, simply because the parents are having financial difficulties due to the burden of child-raising. There is not a decent person anywhere who would not attempt to physically intervene, even at the risk of their own lives.
The fact that there are so few attempts on the lives of abortion doctors proves that the pro-life crowd is intellectually dishonest and does not truly believe its own rhetoric.
But if abortion is neither cosmetic nor murder, then what is it?
Exodus (21: 22-23) states, "If men shall fight, and they collide with a pregnant woman, and she miscarries, but the woman lives, the punishment on the men is financial, as determined by judges. But if the woman dies, there should be capital punishment."
These verses clearly illustrate that the fetus is not a full life. If it were, capital punishment would be called for, as mentioned in the second sentence. We are also shown that the fetus is not a worthless piece of tissue, since financial remuneration is required by the offenders. In addition, there are later references to the health of the mother taking precedence to the life of the fetus.
This biblical approach is the Jewish position, and it is equidistant between the pro-choice and pro-life stances. It states that abortion is not murder ? and not nothing! The only way to enforce this compromise is to allow an immoral act, while at the same time to discourage it strongly, which is exactly what is done in Israel in the majority of cases.
The Jewish biblical position is to create a meaningful societal stigma, so that anyone involved in an abortion knows there are grave moral consequences; that if you have an abortion, you are eliminating potential life and there may be guilt for a very long time.
The Torah's position is that a society which has few or no abortions is a more moral nation. It is good to finally see that Israel is following Torah for guidance on an issue, unlike capital punishment, where Jewish law seems to be ignored.
Our own rhetoric should teach us something. When a pregnant mother feels movement or kicking, she announces, "The baby is kicking." Has any woman in the history of humanity said, "The fetus is kicking"? Yet when a woman wishes to get rid of it, we always use the terminology of "removing the fetus."
A majority of religious and secular people seem to want abortion to be legal, yet do not want to simply "dispose" of developing life. Abortion presents all of us, religious and secular, with a tragic moral choice. Though it is tempting to legislate morality, this is not always the answer, as the case of adultery would seem to prove.
There are very few people, if any, who are pro-adultery; yet no one would seriously consider putting a law on the books prohibiting it. What we prefer is to create a moral society where great religious values produce a powerful stigma against violating the marital bond.
The law should not, by itself, prevent abortion from becoming a form of birth control. Non-legal means should also be considered, such as creating a fund to pay women not to have an abortion but put the baby up for adoption. There are millions of infertile couples who would cherish the gift of a baby.
Can such a system be abused by baby trafficking? Of course ? like anything else in life, and such a system must therefore be carefully monitored.
Abortion is not exclusively a women's rights issue. The Torah understood this and regarded it as an important religious matter. Let us all listen to the Torah's wise compromise rather than fight over morally untenable extremes.
The writer is president of Bloch Graulich Whelan, a communications company in New York City (irwin.graulich@verizon.net).
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1079168639924&p=1006953079865
I'm not sure which translation he is using. Here's a Hebrew-to-English translation:
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Bible/Exodus21.html
22 And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
23 But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
29 But if the ox was wont to gore in time past, and warning hath been given to its owner, and he hath not kept it in, but it hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.
Because one side is darkness and the other light?
Because the leftists are apostates and reprobates.
Quite an admission, that.
Good God! We're not going to lower ourselves to the level of terrorists!
Exodus (21: 22-23) states, "If men shall fight, and they collide with a pregnant woman, and she miscarries, but the woman lives, the punishment on the men is financial, as determined by judges. But if the woman dies, there should be capital punishment."
These verses clearly illustrate that the fetus is not a full life. If it were, capital punishment would be called for, as mentioned in the second sentence.
B.S. That passage is talking about an accident -- not a willful taking of a human life.
Sorry, Bub. Blows your whole argument, doesn't it?
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