by Rabbi Alan J Yuter
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
In his 2009 article published by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, Rabbi Alan J. Yuter reviews thought and rhetoric about abortion within the Orthodox community. Some excerpts are below. Read more at https://www.jewishideas.org/article/abortion-rhetoric-within-orthodox-judaism-consensus-conviction-covenant
While in theory, the Orthodox Jew consults the canon, the literary trove of which is both necessary and sufficient source of normative value, in practice this trove is mediated by rabbis, known as gedolim, great ones, or hakhmei ha-Mesorah, Masoretic sages, whose divinely inspired intuition is empowered to parse divine intent and to preserve the cohesiveness of culture based Orthodox Judaism.
Therefore, the assault upon the fetus is, according to the Pentateuchal document that every Orthodox Judaism accepts to be the will and word of God, the human fetus carries the status of property, but not person.
Talmudic [in bSan 72a] only refers to a legally mandated abortion. Philologically parsed, this canonical statement prescribes that in a case in which the maternal life, i.e., a legally defined person carrying moral rights, is endangered by a life threatening fetus, which prior to birth is considered to be not a person but property, Oral Torah law mandates the destruction of the fetus, which is property, in order to spare the actual living human person, the gestating mother. The claim, advanced by R. Bleich and others, that an abortion is in fact forbidden by statutory implication, reflects the a priori ideology of the exegete but neither the philological sense of the statute nor the actual norm encoded in that statute.
Pro-life Orthodox Judaism ignores the astonishing fact that the religiously canonical bArakhin 7a-b actually fills the gap of the wrongly and ideologically imputed silence of bSanhedrin 72a. The claim that non-therapeutic abortions “must” be halakhically forbidden is based [or biased] upon an ideological reading of a passage that only and explicitly deals with a mandated abortion. In bArakhin 7a-b, a woman about to be executed by the court is, if pregnant, aborted, [a] even though the biological father has property rights to the unborn, because the court is empowered to confiscate property, in this case, the fetus for which there is a paternal claim of property concern, and [b] the grounds for taking this action, the destruction of the fetus, is the shame that the condemned woman would endure if executed while pregnant. Therefore, the condemned woman’s shame provides sufficient warrant to confiscate what Jewish law in its canonical statement defines as property. We have in this passage an explicit warrant for discretionary abortion.
The abortion debate has a long history in Jewish law. One Tosafist view allows abortion, and another does not, arguing that Judaism cannot be less strict than non-Jewish religions. The restrictive view is often cited, the lenient view is not. While to his abiding moral credit, Rabbi Feinstein unflinchingly cited and addressed the lenient Tosafist view, he argued from conjecture and without a shred of evidence that the lenient view must be rejected because the Tosafist text is corrupt. Maimonides argues that the claim “Judaism must be stricter than other religions,” is inadmissible, that Judaism’s canonical documents lone defines Judaism, and we do not spin texts in order to find what we wish to find. [Iggeret ha-Shemad] So for Maimonides, [1] Torah religion is about obeying God’s law and not being reflexively strict, and we argue that [2] before one claims that a given text should be discarded because it is corrupt, that corruption must be identified and defined, and not merely proclaimed because the textual content conflicts with the interpreter’s positions.
Read more at https://www.jewishideas.org/article/abortion-rhetoric-within-orthodox-judaism-consensus-conviction-covenant
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Educated and first ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Alan J. Yuter earned additional ordinations from Yeshiva University, supervised by Rav Moshe D. Tendler, and the Israeli Chief Rav Mordecai Eliahu. He further received Yadin Yadin from Rav David Weiss Halivni and earned a PhD in modern Hebrew Literature from New York University.
A founding member of the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter served as a faculty member at the UTJ’s rabbinical school and has held multiple pulpits, including extended stints in Springfield, NJ, and Baltimore, MD.
Rabbi Yuter is a prolific writer on ritual and philosophical issues, underpinnings of halakha, Biblical criticism, and much more. His essays can be found on UTJ’s Viewpoints . He is also a frequent contributor for The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
In addition to his activities with the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter teaches at Torat Reva in Jerusalem and is associated with the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, affiliated with Ohr Torah Stone in Efrat.
Rabbi Yuter and his wife Linda reside in Israel.