But you won't hear a politician say that. Well, they won't - but mostly because they have speech writers who write as impressively and wonderfully as Toby Ziegler (maybe eventually I'll have a post without referencing the West Wing). Perhaps they would say "abortion is immoral - it's murder." But they'd be wrong on that count. According to Jewish law, the collection of cells in a woman's uterus is worth less than a human being. And you can find this out by doing a simple Google search: read Exodus 21:22. Using the Etz Chaim (Jewish Publication Society's, the Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) translation: "22:When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. 23: But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life..." The verses establish that a baby does not have a nefesh. In Judaism, all humans have a nefesh, an immortal soul. As verse 23 elucidates, destroying a nefesh causes one to forfeit one's life. One will be put to death. Now here, if a man causes a pregnant woman to lose her baby, the Torah explains the man is not punishable for murder, but rather for the destruction of property, a much lesser crime. "An eye for an eye" ensures the punishment is just: according to the Etz Chaim commentary on the verses, in some ancient Near Eastern societies, murder victims' families could accept monetary compensation, but the Torah forbids this form of justice. To quote the commentary: "The guilt of a murderer is infinite because the murdered life is invaluable." It goes on to explain that there is a greater contrast between Torah and Near Eastern societies. While those societies called for the death penalty for "crimes against property," the only capital crime in the Torah is the destruction of life. And in this case, because the Torah only asks for monetary compensation, it clearly does not classify the crime as a capital one. So the Torah does not view the fetus as a full-fledged human life, which is what the Talmudic rabbis concluded.
However, that does not mean the fetus is not valued. It is valued highly because it has the potential for becoming a life. This is a mere introduction. The issue is much more complicated, as is the Jewish understanding of abortion. The very simple Jewish answer is that abortion is not murder but only acceptable in very limited circumstances: namely, when the fetus endangers the life of the mother.
I do not claim to be an authority on abortion and certainly not on Judaism. This was just my writing exercise for the day.
Abortion - A Short Weigh-In by Samuel Weintraub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
