JN Thoughts

A MONTHLY MIX OF IDEAS

Uphold Jewish
Values Of Life

Court Assaults
Women's Rights

New York/JTA

of five male Supreme Court justices can
cast aside all women's right to safety,
respect for women as moral decision-mak-
he Supreme Court has made
ers and three decades of legal precedent.
it clear that ideology trumps
women's health in the nation's
Since 2000, when a very different
Supreme Court overturned, also by a 5-4
highest court. On April 18, the Supreme
vote, a nearly identical state abortion-ban
Court made it clear that respect for legal
law, the composition of the court
precedent is dead. Clear that
has been radically transformed
Roe v. Wade's protections are no
by President Bush's appoint-
longer immutable. Clear that
ments of Samuel Alito Jr. and
it doesn't mind letting its own
John Roberts. This is what we
self-described "moral concerns"
feared would happen, and it was
trump constitutional protections.
one reason NCJW opposed the
Clear that the religious right has
confirmation of these clearly
ascended to the federal bench.
anti-choice nominees.
Clear that it favors politics over
Phy Ilis
As I read this disturbing
safety and science, leaving doctors
Sny der
with fewer options — and women Co u nte rpoint decision, I bitterly recalled how
both men assured the Senate
at risk for their health and safety.
Judiciary Committee that they would
The Supreme Court delivered a devas-
respect legal precedent.
tating blow to women and women's health
But Ginsburg wrote, "Ultimately, the
in its 5-4 decision to uphold the federal
Court admits that 'moral concerns' are
abortion ban in Gonzalez v. Carhart and
at work, concerns that could yield pro-
Gonzalez v. Planned Parenthood. Since
hibitions on any abortion.... By allowing
such concerns to carry the day and case,
overriding fundamental rights, the Court
dishonors our precedent."
This new precedent likely will open the
floodgates for anti-choice legislation. The
religious right has scored a victory and
will use this decision to eviscerate other
1973, this is the first time an abortion ban reproductive rights. We must be vigilant.
We cannot change the Supreme Court's
that does not include an exception for a
decision, but we can reaffirm our commit-
woman's health has been upheld. This is a
ment to federal court appointees loyal to
dangerous erosion of reproductive rights.
the Constitution rather than to ideologi-
Reproductive-rights activists and
cally driven "moral concerns."
defenders of religious liberty were out-
Surely it must be clear to all that the
raged that Congress, the president and
now the Supreme Court could all cast aside composition of the U.S. Supreme Court
matters, and with 2008 elections quickly
the rights of women. Contrary to Justice
approaching, voters are unlikely to forget
Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, the
federal abortion ban does create an "undue this tragic and very close decision. We
must make sure that the "moral concerns"
burden" on women — preventing them
of five men do not determine the options
from accessing what might be the safest
of American women, who have their own
way for them to terminate a pregnancy.
Our anger has strengthened our resolve. moral and religious beliefs.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D Calif., and Rep.
We had hoped not to have to fight for safe,
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., have announced
legal abortion again, but we are ready,
their introduction of the Freedom of Choice
willing and able. We must.
Consider the forceful dissenting opin-
Act. This legislation is designed to protect
the health of women and has the added
ion, in which Supreme Court Justice Ruth
benefit of putting Congress on record in
Bader Ginsburg wrote that this "alarm-
support of a woman's right to choose.
ing" decision "tolerates, indeed applauds,
I hope all senators and representatives
federal intervention to ban nationwide a
who care about women will immediately
procedure found necessary and proper in
pledge to support the Freedom of Choice
certain cases by the American College of
Act and the women of our nation. Fl
Obstetricians and Gynecologists." This, in
her words, is "irrational."
Phyllis Snyder is president of the National
We must consider again what it means
Council of Jewish Women (www.ncjw.org).
when the self-described "moral concerns"

T

he U.S. Supreme Court's uphold-
ing of the federal Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act has elicited the
usual cries of protest from abortion rights
advocates and, also as usual, they include
an assortment of Jewish groups
and the New York Times.
That latter institution charac-
terized the term "partial-birth
abortion" itself as a "provocative
label" for the presumably more
descriptive "intact dilation and
extraction:' As it happens, the
Times and the other advocates
are correct about the inaccuracy
of the term "partial-birth abor-
tion;' but not because it exagger-
ates the repugnance of the procedure in
question.
Despite concerted efforts by some to
misrepresent the law, its language is stark
and clear. It prohibits any overt act, like
the puncturing of the brain, "that the per-
son knows will kill" a fetus whose "entire
head is outside the body of the mother
or, in the case of breech presentation, any
part of the fetal trunk past the navel is
outside the body of the mother."
Thus, it is not abortion at all that the
law at issue addresses but rather the
killing of a baby whose head or most of
whose body has emerged into the world.
Readers of the Times' editorial page, and
much of the "mainstream" media, might
be forgiven for not realizing what the pro-
cedure actually entails.
Nor have the media done a very good job
explaining what exemptions the law does
or does not contain. Since it does not con-
tain an exemption for the mother's "health:'
there is wide assumption — at least from
the evidence of calls and e-mails I have
received — that even if the mother's life
were somehow threatened by allowing the
partially emerged infant to fully emerge,
the federal prohibition would stand.
In fact, though, the law contains an
explicit exception for cases where the pro-
cedure is deemed necessary to preserve
the mother's life.
As to a "health" exemption, the Supreme
Court's majority found, among other
things, that if there is any threat to mater-
nal health — a possibility about which no
medical consensus exists — "safe alter-
natives to the prohibited procedure are
available."
Even more troubling to me as a Jew
than the misunderstandings of the facts

is that a number of rabbis and Jewish
organizational spokespeople have asserted
that Jewish religious tradition is some-
how offended by the recently upheld law.
The president of Hadassah, to take one
example, has baldly stated that the law
"undermines Jewish values."
She and others who have made
similar claims are misinformed
and, in turn, misinform.
To be sure, the talmudic
sources are clear that the life of a
Jewish woman whose pregnancy
endangers her takes precedence
over that of her unborn when
there is no way to preserve both
lives. That is why Agudath Israel,
while we oppose Roe v. Wade's
effective "abortion on demand:'
has not and would never favor a wholesale
ban on abortion.
While the matter is not free from con-
troversy, there are rabbinic opinions that
allow abortion when the pregnancy seri-

Washington/JTA

T

At Issue:
The Supreme. Court's affirmation of the
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

ously jeopardizes the mother's health. But
those narrow exceptions do not translate
into some unlimited "mother's right" to
"make her own reproductive choices"
— the position Hadassah enthusiastically
trumpets.
Moreover, in the specific context of
"intact dilation and extraction" — to
use the Times' preferred nomenclature
— Jewish law certainly confers no right
to kill a live baby whose head, or most of
whose body, has already emerged. Indeed,
once birth has already occurred, Jewish
law makes clear the newborn child has no
less right to live than does the mother.
Stated simply, what the Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act prohibits is, in the eyes of
Jewish law, little if anything short of murder.
Nothing, of course, prevents a Jew, or
Jewish organization or rabbi, from ignor-
ing the teachings of the Jewish religious
tradition. But intellectual integrity, if noth-
ing else, should prevent anyone from mis-
representing the content of a law or what
Jewish tradition has to say about killing an
unborn child — or a born one. II

Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs

for Agudath Israel of America.

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JP1

April 26 • 2007

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