Abortion as Treatment for Maternal Mental Illness

This is the third of seven Jewish legal opinions regarding the status of unborn human life that depart from the protections for unborn human life stated clearly in Tanakh. We are offering these seven opinions in parallel with the seven Haftorot of Consolation that fall on the seven consecutive Shabbats between Tisha B' Av and Rosh Hashanah. This week we examine the opinion that allows for abortion to treat maternal mental illness. 

The tribulation and tragedy of mental illness cannot be overestimated. A clinical overview of its causes, diagnosis, and treatment doesn’t begin to show the complicated personal and family pain and suffering it engenders. The dysfunction spills out into society where we see the profound social problems and costs associated with it.

Anyone who has experienced mental illness personally or has worked in the field knows that our modern methods of diagnosing and treating it have a long way to go before efficacious, safe methods are discovered and accepted. 

One thing is clear. In not one single case listed in the literature is killing another person a suggested treatment for mental illness. Even in cases where abuse is found to be the cause of the illness, the treatment does not include killing the abuser.

Killing unborn children to treat mental illness is an accepted treatment, however. Many legal experts, doctors, social workers, psychologists and clergy frequently determine that torturing a baby to death in the womb passes for ethical treatment of maternal mental illness. 

Several elements converge to allow this practice. The unborn baby is dehumanized and so killing it falls outside moral consideration. A sincere desire to alleviate maternal suffering, unawareness of alternative treatments, and time pressures of pregnancy all contribute. Psychiatric treatment for mental illness uses drug therapy, so the use of chemical abortion fits well into the treatment model.

As long as the dangers of all abortion and especially chemical abortion go unreported in professional mental health literature, use of abortion drugs to treat maternal mental illness will continue.

When treating maternal mental illness with abortion began, no valid research was available to prove the humanity of the baby in the womb. We now know that the treatment kills an innocent human being, a child. This information begs the question: Would treatment for maternal mental illness include killing her infant or toddler? The same visceral opposition to this treatment option ought to apply to killing her unborn child.

Likewise, no valid research was available to show that mental and emotional problems increase after abortion. Many research studies now prove strongly that abortion causes and exacerbates mental illness. Abortion can now be shown to be contraindicated as a treatment for mental illness. In cases of rape, a highly stressful situation, surveys of women who had abortion say it added to their trauma.

Mental illness often leads to loss of autonomy in treatment decisions, leading to forced abortion. Once a court orders a mental health assessment and a diagnosis is determined, treatment authority transfers from the mother to a doctor or family member who can order an abortion that may be against her wishes. The patient may be sufficiently weakened from drug therapy meant to manage her symptoms that she is unable to object to abortion and protect her unborn child.  

Recent studies reveal that psychiatric hospitalization is over twice as likely to occur after induced abortions than after live births.

Half of Abortion Patients’ Suicide Attempts Self-Attributed to Their Abortions, New Study of Random Sample

https://afterabortion.org/suicidestudy/

Abortion Strongly Linked to Psychiatric Hospitalization, New Study of 1.2 Million Women

https://app.getresponse.com/view.html?x=a62b&co=SvYLz&m=BKqlWW&mc=Jb&s=d45Q&u=Wp&z=EJjPM2L&

Psychiatric Treatments Rise After Abortion, New Study

https://afterabortion.org/psychiatric-treatments-rise-after-abortion-new-study/

Jewish legal opinions that allow for abortion in cases of maternal mental illness appear in two sources. The first source is a journal article in Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought titled Quality and Sanctity of Life in the Talmud and Midrash Coauthored by Dr Fred Rosner, Mental Anguish.

This work attempts to explain how abortion applies to ancient stories on mental anguish with nothing to do with deliberately killing someone as treatment. This approach rests on the premise that maternal suicide risk calls for abortion to save the mother's life. Text here.

The second source of abortion for maternal mental illness is in the 2015 reference book, Peninei Halakhah (“Pearls of Jewish Law”), authored by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed. This is a Hebrew language comprehensive series of books on Jewish law applied to today’s ever-changing world (that is, a morally declining world). The work is popular in Israel, where it is often used as the standard halakhah textbook in religious Zionist schools, and in Jewish communities throughout the world.

In chapters 9.5 thru 9.11, this author lists abortion homicide as treatment for maternal mental anguish for a variety of reasons: postpartum depression, concern for a baby who has a fetal abnormality, pregnancy outside of marriage, as well as other psychological stressors. He mentions the use of chemical abortion as an 'indirect' method of baby killing, presumably a morally less objectionable approach than other methods. This author distinguishes between restrictive and permissive views on abortion. He claims that the primary halakhic position is the more permissive one. 

Permissive views of abortion in Judaism for maternal mental illness deny life to our most vulnerable family members based on primitive stories about mental health challenges. These views disregard a mother’s mental anguish after her child’s demise and offer no healing opportunity afterward. They ignore supportive and therapeutic interventions that alleviate a mother’s mental problems and safeguard her baby’s life. 

They dismiss the mental health challenges that men face whether they cannot or will not protect their children from the violence of abortion.

It is highly disturbing to any Jew who views unborn life as sacred that this textbook defines contemporaryJewish opinion as Jewish law and teaches this to Jews around the world. This deception dissemination explains why abortion is now normative as birth control in Israel. It accounts for an appalling majority of Jews who consider abortion a Jewish value instead of an assault against God and Jewish culture.

Jewish law comes from God, not from agnostics masquerading as religious. No matter how well intentioned abortion to treat maternal mental illness may be, we must resist the temptation to acquiesce and play God. Life is precious, and that innocent unborn baby's life in the cross hairs of mental health treatment is just as precious as yours.

Please share this post on your social media to amplify our message in this troubled world. Thank you.

Cecily Routman 

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.

Cecily Routman is the founder and president of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation. She opposes abortion homicide in general and among Jews in particular and laments secular policy making in Israel that results in loss of Jewish life and delays the messianic redemption. She envisions a Torah based holy Land of Israel and a world that respects the life of every human being from conception.