To
My Dear Students,
I
commend to you the following teaching from Rabbi
Arthur Waskow, written in response to the murder
of Dr. George Tiller.
“So
another physician has been murdered for making
it possible for women to actually use their constitutional
right to choose an abortion.
All
honor to Dr. Tiller, who joins the list of martyrs
for ethical decency and human rights, killed for
healing with compassion. - In
his case, a religious martyr in the fullest classical
sense, killed in his own church as he arrived
to worship, killed for acting in accord with his
religious commitments and his moral and ethical
choices.
And
all dishonor to those vicious attackers like Bill
O'Reilly who have egged on the kind of violence
that finally murdered Dr. Tiller. And who
have blasphemously invoked the name of God to
justify these incitements to murder.
There
are two real-life cases of abortion that have
shaped my own judgment on the practice, in addition
to the Torah's only comment on abortion - which
makes utterly clear that it is not murder.
(The Torah says that if someone causes an abortion
but does no other harm to the mother, the agent
owes a monetary recompense to the father for the
loss of his potential offspring. And that's all.)
I
recognize that some other religious traditions
do claim it is murder, but I both disagree with
their theology and think they have no right to
impose it on mine, by state power or by
murder.
One
of these real-life cases of abortion that have
shaped my views is that my father's mother had
already birthed five young boys when she became
pregnant again in 1914. She hoped to be
able to concentrate her energy on raising those
five instead of birthing more. Because abortions
were illegal, she had a "back-alley"
abortion - and it killed her. So she was
unable to raise any of them. Her early death
cast a shadow over my father's life till his own
dying day.
The
second is that one of my friends and teachers,
a great and eminent rabbi, was the child of a
mother who fled Vienna after Hitler annexed Austria
. His mother was pregnant again when the family
needed to leave, and they knew that the underground
"railroad" to freedom was bound to be
too arduous for a pregnant woman. The choices
were: staying in Austria , to die together; leaving
her behind, to die alone; or aborting the fetus,
so that all of the family had a chance to live.
She had an abortion. Today my rabbi friend says
they thought then and ever since that she had
given birth to the whole family.
I wish the President, when he spoke at Notre Dame, had
said explicitly what these stories teach me: that
women are moral beings, possessed of moral agency
and responsibility in this unique situation where
their own bodies are intertwined with another's;
and that the lives of women would be endangered
once again if abortion were criminalized again.”
Shabbat
Shalom,
Your Rabbi |
