Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh.
All of Israel is responsible
for one another.
Actions and resources here.
Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh.
All of Israel is responsible for one another.
Actions and resources here.
Shabbat on Reproductive Rights
The National Council of Jewish Women intentionally determined that a Shabbat dedicated to creating conversation about Judaism’s approach to reproductive health access issues would occur each year on Parshat Mishpatim. The reason is because the basis of our approach comes in this parasha:
When [two or more] parties 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, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Ex. 21:22-25)
That is, if a person miscarries accidentally (in this case they got pulled into a fight), the offender is only liable for damages and does not receive the death penalty (life for life). From here, the rabbis determine that a fetus does not hold the same status as a living, breathing, out of the womb, human. In later codes, they will determine that there are times when it is permissible and times when, indeed, it is mandated to terminate a pregnancy. Contrary to other religious approaches, Judaism does not equate a potential life to an existing life; nor does it prioritize potential life over existing life. In fact, the opposite is true. Existing life takes precedence over a fetus. And so, terminating a pregnancy, having an abortion, is not only permitted under certain circumstances, but there are times when one is commanded to do so.
If on some level these verses bother you, you are in good company. I have never been pregnant, but I am told that pregnant people feel life within them almost from the start. To say that the fetus is not a life, and to absolutely ignore the pregnant person (note the woman in this verse is never consulted, it is only her husband) is hard for me to accept. On the other hand, many of us have stories, and many of us have heard stories - often gut wrenching - of times when abortion was the best choice. Merely saying that all abortion is immoral and therefore should be illegal for everyone denies us our freedom to practice our religion and denies us autonomy over our own bodies. I would add that if we are truly “pro life,” our attention should be focused on equitable and affordable access to pre- and post-natal health care, as well as proper, affordable, and equally accessible child care rather than singling out abortion and contraception.
R. Emily Langowitz and R. Joshua R. S. Fixler wrote in their essay,“Abortion and Reproductive Justice”:
These texts and their subsequent interpretations are a vital resource for all of us who seek to affirm Jewish support for the choice to terminate a pregnancy and to advocate from a Jewish perspective for laws that protect reproductive choice. And we are called to go further; the law is only one facet of a full and holistic justice…The text in Exodus 21 begins with an act of violence perpetrated against a pregnant woman, and yet this woman is all but absent from subsequent conversation about this passage. Across the centuries, almost all of the voices of Jewish interpretation, and even many modern commentators, fail to acknowledge her story. The interpreters miss the opportunity to see her as subject, rather than object. To see the woman in this text as merely a hypothetical in a legal case study is to deny that cases such as these were very real to the people who experienced them. To reach a full sense of justice in our understanding of abortion, we must pair
mishpatim (laws) with
sippurim (stories). (The Social Justice Torah Commentary,
2021)
Parshat Mishpatim offers us the basis for what has become halacha (law), but it is the sippurim, the stories, that bring us the pregnant person’s voice and the complexity of the decision and its aftermath, into the conversation. TBE is open to this conversation on this Shabbat, and at all other times.
Shabbat Shalom.
