Rabbi Silver, All Life Deserves Protection. Drop Your Lawsuit!

As a disabled adult from a mother who had a very difficult delivery, the subject of life vs. abortion is quite personal. I can report that my mother and father were quite happy with the eventual successful result of that delivery. Even with a degree of cerebral palsy, hearing loss, and a bit of learning disability, I am most happy and thankful to be alive. My children are also happy that I am in this world. Does not every Jewish baby killed move forward the Nazis' program? I was fortunately born in 1943 in the United States and therefore not subject to their tyranny. 

As a Jew I am shocked to see how many supposed Jews support an imagined 'RIGHT' to abort pre-born babies. The Ramban in Mishnah Torah wrote that the Noahide Laws define the killing of even one unborn baby in the mother's womb is murder. He also points out that this also applies to Jews and that such a murderer is liable to the death penalty. Is there anything unclear about this? Rabbi Ahron Soloveitchik, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Rabbi Manachem Mental Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and other rabbis warn that killing unborn babies is murder. 

Michelene Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School, states "It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." This is not a matter of "belief." Life processes begin when DNA of the father and mother join at conception. The eventual result will be a human baby, never a cat, a camel, or a cow. There is no question about it. 

Also Gen. 9:6-7, "He who spills the blood of man (generic for human, including women) within man (i.e. woman) shall have his blood spilt (be executed).For in the image of G-d made He man. And you shall be fruitful and multiply, swarm the earth, and multiply therein." 

We are told of Rebecca's difficult pregnancy with the twins Jacob and Esau; there is no hint that she considered abortion. In fact there is not a single mention of an abortion in the entire Tanach. There are instances where a person is permitted to kill in what we would call a home invasion that threatens the householders' lives. There is no circumstance where the killing of an unborn baby is permitted. 

The protection of maternal life only applies to the protection of her actual physical life. It does not apply to circumstances of inconvenience, job security, career path, or a man's preference not to support a child, among myriad other rationalizations. 

The idea that an infant is "water" for the first 40 days is medieval medical knowledge; would you go for medical care to someone who believed that humors and vapors were instrumental in illnesses?  I presume virtually everyone accepts the germ theory of disease, as do I.  If, G-d forbid, I were to contract an illness or have an injury, I would NOT rely on any sort of pre-modern medical knowledge. When I was born in 1943, medicine was far advanced from the Middle Ages -- for which I am quite thankful!   

We no longer hold to a flat earth with an upside down bowl-like "firmament" overhead, rain does not really come through windows in the sky, scientific observations tell us that there is not an expanse of water under the earth and another over the earth, rather our planet is an oblate spheroid that revolves around a star that is but one in a galaxy that is itself part of a galaxy cluster, and so on and on. There are more elements than air, earth, fire, and water. Science now tells us that life processes begin at conception and then continue until death. We have, thank G-d, gained much knowledge since the Middle Ages.   

Many people still need to adjust their understandings about the earliest stages of life just as people have previously adjusted understandings of geology, astronomy, chemistry, disease causation, and other categories of knowledge.

L'chaim, Don Belding

A Palm Beach County Jewish congregation challenges state's abortion law https://www.wlrn.org/local-news/2022-06-14/a-palm- beach-county-jewish-congregation-challenges-states- abortion-law 

Congregation L’Dor Va-Dorhttps://www.ldorvador.org/ 

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