Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

L'Chaim, To Pro-Life

The great Hunter Baker has requested that I address the very important question of Jewish pro-life belief and activity. This will require some fairly thorough treatment, and I will commit to returning to this matter within a few days. However, I need to get on the road tomorrow morning; I'm driving from Miami to Savannah, Georgia, to spend the weekend with friends. Gotta get meself into a bed for five or so hours.

In brief, let me just say that normative Jewish belief, based on explicit Jewish law, is that abortion is forbidden, and considered an act of murder, except to save the life of the mother. However, there is some extra latitude given to abortions within the first forty days from conception; the child is legally considered unformed until that time.

As to the question of to what extent has there been an effort to promulgate this view within the culture and to fight for it in the political realm, we will leave that until I have a tad more time.

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