Challenge Abortion Support!

It is tragic that American Jews (particularly in the Reform movement but even in some quarters of the Modern Orthodox movement) have been in the forefront of "reproductive rights" which is Newspeak, as George Orwell would put it, for abortion on demand. The School of Social Work of Yeshiva University, a university that is supposed to champion traditional Jewish values, recently sponsored a colloquium on reproductive freedom and did not even offer a pro-life view consistent with traditional Torah values. In fact, Yeshiva did not even have the decency to respond to emails and phone calls from members of the Jewish Pro Life Foundation, of which I am a member, asking that they postpone their ill thought-out panel discussion or at least have a more balanced position consistent with Jewish Law. 

Judaism is the original pro-life religion. Christianity and Islam obtain their pro-life views from Judaism – certainly not from the surrounding pagan cultures which practiced child sacrifice. In fact, the Roman historian Tacitus condemned Jews and Christians because they would not practice child sacrifice. 

What is partial or late term abortion except the modern version of infanticide? And why did so many Reform rabbis defend Bill Clinton when he vetoed a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortion? I believe the answer lies in the association of American Jews with the Democrat party (nearly 80% of American Jews are registered Democrats although that number may be declining); the corruption of seminaries by liberals; the secularization of reform Judaism; and the fear that more traditional rabbis may have of the donors and of the people who hire and fire. 

The corruption of traditional Judaism – which includes the corruption of and by female "rabbis", and even publications such as AISH and the Jewish Telegraphic Organization – has led to a watering down of Jewish teaching on the importance of having children and has turned the idea of Jewish mothers making extraordinary sacrifices for their children, on its head. It has also led to a total disregard for the Torah and has turned Judaism into a School for Social Work. Witness, for example, the heinous act committed by "rabbi" Rachael Pass: "My abortion was a blessing. As a rabbi, I will fight for others to be able to make their own sacred choice," as published by JTA on September 3, 2021. A single woman, Ms. Pass engaged in sex while a student at Hebrew Union College rather than waiting for marriage, and decided to abort the baby. She even made a pro and con list! In her twisted, narcissistic world, God did not play too much of a role in her decision although she did attend her "Medieval Jewish History class". She received her abortion pills from the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street, blissfully unaware or unconcerned with Sanger's history of anti-Semitism (she saw Jewish immigrants as unworthy to reproduce). Ironically the same German pharmaceutical company that originated RU486 (the abortion pill) also produced the poison gas used in the Nazi gas chambers. This means nothing to Rachael Pass, a women immersed in her own lack of self-awareness.

It is thus doubly tragic – given our dwindling numbers - that mainstream Jewish organizations including the ADL, Hadassah and even Hillel, have devoted themselves to the pro-abortion cause. The ADL and the detestable National Council of Jewish Women submitted briefs in opposition to overturning Roe. Representatives of those "mainstream" organizations showed up in Washington D.C. to protest the returning of Roe v. Wade to the states – where it belongs – and to advocate for the unlimited right of women to destroy their offspring in the womb – a decidedly un-Jewish value! 

Support of abortion rights also puts American Jews at odds with their more devout Christian neighbors and plays on the terrible, medieval anti-Semitic stereotype of the awful Jew killing Christian children to use in religious practices! Ms. Pass sees abortion as "health care" and even tries to invoke Jewish law to push abortion for the "poor, the widows and orphaned . . . the people who will continue to be more devastated by this abortion ban (the Texas abortion law) . . .” Ms. Pass is too self-involved to realize that even after an abortion, a poor woman will remain poor – and, even worse, spiritually poorer. Ironically, Ms. Pass suggests that people donate to "Jane's Due Process" and the "Lilith Fund" to enable poor women to have abortions rather than do anything constructive to make it easier for a poor woman to give birth and care for her child. 

Note to Ms. Pass: there is nothing "dignified" about an abortion. And you are doing American Jews a terrible injustice by shilling for the abortion industry. You are also violating God's laws for your own selfish hedonistic purposes. 

Alice Lemos is a director with the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation.

This opinion piece originally appeared in the August 2022 edition of the Queens Village Republican Club newsletter.

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