On Abortions: Jewish Law, Morality, and Public Debate (Column 73)
With God’s help
A few days ago I was speaking with friends (not religious) whose daughter is in the admissions process for medical school. During the conversation I remembered a story that has accompanied me for quite a few years now about a young man, a graduate of a hesder yeshiva, who came to an interview for medical studies. The interviewers, seeing a religious candidate before them, asked what he would do if he encountered a case that required an induced abortion (this was a case in which the mother’s life was not at risk). He gave them the following immortal answer: If you mean the question of Jewish law, that can be solved quite easily. Perhaps I’ll sell the knife to a gentile. But on the moral question, I would be happy to hear what you yourselves think ought to be done. He of course meant to sharpen the problematic nature of the interviewers’ implicit approach. Apparently, in their view this was a purely halakhic question, some kind of religious eccentricity, as though there were no moral aspects here. The interviewers addressed the question specifically to the religious applicant because they assumed that precisely someone like him ought to hesitate over the issue. The answer of any secular candidate presumably seemed self-evident to them. But, as that candidate argued quite rightly, this question has a powerful moral dimension, and therefore it is very puzzling to me that today it is perceived as a question that mainly troubles religious people.
In contemporary discourse (= the mutual shouting, mainly in the US) about abortions, the divide runs very sharply between religious and secular people, as though this were not a moral problem but only a question of Jewish law. The arguments that arise in this discourse from the secular side speak about a woman’s right over her own body, the freedom to choose, and the like, as though this were not a matter of taking the life of a living being. Women protest against their objectification, as though they were nothing but instruments for bearing children. As though the question of murder and the taking of life were not itself a problem at all. When someone demands that the life of the fetus not be taken, this is not perceived as a moral demand but as a chauvinistic ideological social statement that discriminates against women. The most astonishing point in this discussion, to my mind, is that despite the deep moral dimension of the matter, to this day I have not met a secular person who categorically opposes abortions in a situation where the mother’s life is not in danger. That is really something!
It is patently clear that people perceive the discussion as an ideological exchange between religious and secular people, one that has only halakhic aspects, and not as a moral dispute about the value of human life and the prohibition of murder.
The form of the discourse
My discussion here concerns the question whether it is permissible to abort a fetus when the mother is not in danger. Such a question may arise in several kinds of cases: beginning with a woman or girl who was raped and became pregnant, and giving birth would place her in a difficult social and emotional (and perhaps also economic) situation; continuing with a household in severe socioeconomic difficulty that will struggle to raise the child to be born under reasonable conditions; and ending with a simply unwanted pregnancy (they do not want a child right now). Another type of case is when testing reveals that the fetus is ill, and that after birth both it and those around it are expected to face difficult lives and suffering at various levels.
Without conducting a proper survey, my impression is that in all these cases there is sweeping support in liberal-secular society for the legitimacy of abortion. By contrast, the ‘benighted’ religious people, chiefly the fundamentalist Christians in the US and, in a much more moderate and quiet way, the religious Jews, and certainly the Haredim here in Israel, oppose them across the board. The former accuse their counterparts of darkness and rigidity and of paternalistically violating women’s rights and objectifying them, while the latter answer them with the prohibition of murder.
As in many other debates, here too the coin has two sides, and seemingly each side ignores one of them. Abortion is always a dilemma. On the one hand stand the hardships—from mortal danger to the mother, through psychological and economic distress for her and her partner or for the fetus, and on to their simple lack of desire to bring a child into the world. On the other hand, we are speaking of a living creature, and ‘abortion’ is nothing but a laundered term for taking its life in cold blood (just like ‘organ harvesting,’ ‘dragging,’ or ‘slicing,’ and the like). This dispute proceeds in a very typical way: there is argument A in favor of position a (a woman’s right over her body and her freedom to choose, in favor of abortions) and argument B in favor of position b (the prohibition of murder and the value of human life, against abortions), and both are correct. Whoever supports position a waves argument A as though it alone exists, and ignores argument B. And whoever supports position b will of course do the opposite. The reason for this unintelligent form of dispute, which recurs again and again, is that if one presents the arguments that support both sides, it suddenly becomes very hard to decide. It is clear that there are costs to each of the two possible decisions, and there are good reasons for both. It is very hard, and sometimes impossible, to decide between two valid values or two valid arguments (see in column 28 on the problem of the incommensurability of values).
So how can one defend, with utter fervor and certainty, the position of my tribe against the benighted/corrupt people on the other side? To arrive at full certainty one must completely ignore the arguments that support the other side. One must tirelessly brandish the one and only argument in one direction, while raising one’s eyes to heaven in silent wonder at how the other person can be so wicked or stupid as to ignore such a correct and wise argument. Up to this point everything looks symmetrical, that is, neither side is discussing the matter honestly. Later I shall argue against this symmetry. Unpleasant as it may be, on this issue I actually join the ‘benighted’ side. In my opinion, the side that is not serious in these arguments is mainly, and usually, the liberal-secular side.
The dilemma
But if one focuses the dilemma more sharply, the symmetry breaks down. It seems that the dilemma concerns mainly one side of the equation: who or what counts as a human being. More precisely, from when does the fertilized egg become a human being? The formation of a human begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg. From there on, through a fairly complex process, a fetus develops more and more physiological functions, and at the end of the process it is born. A newborn baby is already considered, by all opinions, a human being. By contrast, a sperm cell, according to most opinions, is not yet a human being. So when, between those two stages, does the transition occur: at birth? at the moment of fertilization? at some point in the middle? It is hard to see a criterion that would give us the desired line. This is a continuous process in which a fertilized cell becomes a person, and therefore it is very difficult to draw a line marking exactly when that happens. Moreover, as I explained in columns 25–26, this is not a medical question. No physician can offer us a definition of this line on the basis of medical knowledge, because this is not a medical question but a value-laden definition. With respect to definitions, a physician has no added value over any other person. At best, the physician can describe to us what physiological functions the fetus has at each stage of pregnancy. But he has no scientific tools to determine from what moment we are dealing with a human being. This is a question of definition, and it lies entirely in the sphere of values, not in the scientific one. It is worth looking at those columns to see how badly physicians fail to understand arguments of this kind (apparently because of the guild’s ideological and self-interested biases).
As noted, the dilemma has two sides: on the one hand, the distress of the woman and the parents, and sometimes also of the fetus; and on the other hand, the life of the fetus. And yet my claim here is that the status of fetal life is the principal question in this issue. Why? Because none of the hardships described above would lead us to permit murder. Thus, if there is a couple for whom it does not suit them to raise a child, or a woman who experiences distress because it is very difficult for her to raise a child, would we permit them to kill a three-year-old child? Would we even allow them to put him out of the house? I assume most readers will agree that we would not. Why? Because we assume that a three-year-old child is a human being in every respect, and if we are dealing with a human being then it is clear that all the above considerations carry no significance whatsoever. A person’s right over his home or his freedom to choose (whether or not to raise a child) does not permit him to kill his child who is growing up in that home, or even to throw the child out of the house. Why? Does a person not have rights over his home just as a woman has rights over her body? He certainly does, but the value of life and the prohibition of murder stand above all other considerations, including those rights. The prohibition of murder and the value of life override people’s rights over their home and property. The conclusion is that if this is a matter of taking life, then there is no dilemma. As the saying goes: if there is doubt, there is no doubt.
So why does discussion arise regarding abortions? Only because those who permit them assume that a fetus is not necessarily a human being in the full and certain sense. This ambiguous status, and this alone, allows us to raise considerations of bodily autonomy or the right to choose and the like, and on their basis to permit abortions. That is why I claimed that the fundamental question lies mainly on one side of the equation: the value of life and the definition of a human being. A woman’s rights and her freedom to choose, which stand on the other side, have only secondary and derivative significance. They have weight only if and when we reach the conclusion that a fetus is not a human being and killing it is not murder.
Additional intermediate cases
One can think of other intermediate cases. Parents have a severely intellectually disabled three-year-old child, and they are debating whether to kill him. One can also speak of a dying child or a terminal patient, and certainly of someone in a vegetative state, with respect to whom the dilemma likewise arises whether to relieve us and them of these difficult lives. None of these are human beings in the full sense, and therefore the question can arise with respect to them as well. All of these are intermediate cases regarding the value of life, quite similar to a fetus. One may also think of a person with an unrestrained lust for murder (a serial killer). Is taking his life murder of a human being just like any ordinary person?
The reader is certainly shocked by the comparison. How can one compare a fetus to a sick child or a child who is an economic burden on his parents? And even to a murderer, who too—with all the reservations—is a human being. Can it really be imagined that one may kill people merely because of economic distress or because it does not suit me to keep them alive? Is it permissible to kill a thief who breaks into my home because I have rights over my property and it is a bit difficult for me to stop him in some other way?[1] Our answer to all these questions is an emphatic no.
But one can still ask why this is in fact forbidden. Someone might come and argue, in each of these situations, that we are not dealing with life in the full sense and therefore there is no full prohibition against killing them. Even if killing them without reason can still and should still be seen as a forbidden act, what shall we say when considerations of freedom of choice or rights over our money or our body arise? What if raising such a person will create significant hardship, or it simply does not suit me to keep him alive (he becomes a burden on the state, which keeps him in prison or treats him in a hospital)? In such cases, it seems to me that arguments justifying killing are very similar to the arguments that support abortion for economic reasons or reasons of convenience.
An intellectually disabled child lacks some of the most basic functions that define a human being. Is a fetus that lacks fingernails less of a human being than a child who lacks minimal capacity for thought? Are fingernails more essential to the definition of a human being than thought? Especially since, in the case of a fetus, the missing functions will soon be added (it is only because of lack of time), whereas in the case of an intellectually disabled person, someone with brain damage, or a serial killer, that will probably not happen. None of these are human beings in the full and normative sense, and the claim that their lives do not have full value is no weaker than the claim that fetal life is of that sort. The things they lack seem to me more essential to the definition of the value of life than the organs or functions the fetus still lacks.
Can such an argument permit killing them, at least when significant hardship arises (parallel to the hardship that permits abortions)? It seems to me that most readers will agree with me that it cannot. The reason is that the prohibition of murder and the value of human life are so fundamental in our society that we are unwilling to take risks and enter doubtful and vague calculations of these kinds. Because of the value of human life we impose limitations in all the gray cases and prefer to see the picture in black and white. One of the horrors of the Nazi regime that we all study is the extermination and abuse of the sick and the disabled. What would you say if an extermination camp were established for the intellectually disabled or for children from distressed families, and there they would be eliminated very gently and painlessly? That is exactly what we do to fetuses. Those extermination camps are called abortion clinics. In those clinics doctors eliminate fetuses with knives, out of sight and out of mind, for the convenience of us all. And yet the ‘benighted’ Christians in America who demonstrate against these horrific acts are naturally perceived as violent fundamentalists in the eyes of all the enlightened champions of human dignity.
These days the legal discussion in the case of the soldier who shot, Elor Azaria, continues. Azaria shot a terrorist who was lying on the ground and apparently no longer posed a danger (see column 1). We are dealing with a person who had lost the most basic right to live. If he remained alive he would probably continue to murder Jews whenever he could. He was lucky not to have been shot during the attack itself. The reason the shooting soldier is standing trial, with the enthusiastic encouragement of all the noble champions of human dignity (most of whom, I estimate, are ardent supporters of abortion), is the sanctity of human life. Everyone understands that there is no real problem with that shooting. Everyone would have been glad if that terrorist had been killed during the attack and not merely ‘neutralized.’ On the contrary, the soldier’s shot solved quite a few problems for us and spared the world the punishment of one more superfluous creature. And yet, because this involved taking a life, society is unwilling to compromise. One may not take life unless there is clear and tangible danger that justifies it. This is a taboo, and there is no room for compromise about it.
Back to abortion
But with fetuses the situation is of course different. Here we are actually quite liberal and tolerant. Here, specifically, the one who takes life and supports doing so, even in the most routine kinds of circumstances (simply because it does not suit us right now), is the enlightened, moral, and modern person. Whereas the one who opposes it is benighted, a cleric lacking even minimal capacity for thought and distinction. He has not yet come down from the trees and has not updated himself with the findings of modern science and morality. All he wants is that you not murder millions of children for us in cold blood, and for this sin he is presented as a chauvinist who oppresses women and treats them as an object, a technical instrument for bearing children.
Why is it that when it comes to fetuses, permission to kill seems so clear and self-evident in the eyes of our enlightened cousins? Why is none of them willing to accept even a moderate statement that the line there has at least some shade of gray and is not a simple case? Why is it not legitimate there to say even the minimal (too minimal) thing that absent very great hardship there is no justification for doing this? After all, the doctor sticks a knife or scalpel into the beating heart of a living creature that within a short time will become a full human being in every respect, and kills it, sometimes only because its parents do not wish to give birth to it right now. But even if he does so because the mother has one hardship or another, is that reasonable? The entire camp of the enlightened and the champions of human and women’s rights agree that the line there is white as snow, without even an undertone of gray. In their eyes it is obvious that a fetus is not a human being and therefore there is no principled problem in killing it, at least when the mother is in distress (and even when not really). I am genuinely amazed by this astonishing phenomenon.
My interlocutor in the above meeting claimed that no one denies that this is a moral dilemma. In his view, the supporters think the fetus is not considered a living human being and therefore there is no full prohibition against killing it. That is why they think hardships permit taking its life. Therefore they raise only arguments in favor and ignore the arguments against. If I formalize his claim, I would describe it as follows. From the paradox of the heap we learn that it is not correct to discuss everyday concepts through a binary prism. It is not that it is hard to identify where the line between a fertilized cell and a human being passes; rather, there is no line. The process is continuous, and in fact the fetus passes through different levels of aliveness (different levels of personhood or humanity). He argued that since this is not a human being in the full sense but only in a partial sense, one can balance the moral prohibition on pseudo-murder against the intensity of the hardships and thus permit taking its life.
I asked him: even if you are right and this is indeed the liberal position, how do you explain the broad agreement and the lack of hesitation? How is it that all secular people manage to perform this difficult balancing and unanimously reach the conclusion that abortion is permitted in all the above circumstances? And those same people will explain, with no less certainty, that the intellectually disabled, the terminally ill, or a murderer all stand above the line. It is hard to deny that defining a fetus of several months, which already has all the physiological functions of a human being, as non-human is not unambiguous, and certainly it is no less difficult to determine how much humanity it has. It is no less difficult to balance that against the severity of the hardships (certainly when we simply do not feel like bringing a child into the world). So I might perhaps be willing to accept that there are a few people who would place the line between humanity and severity in such a way that abortion would be permitted (at least in severe hardship), but how is it that everyone thinks that way? Everyone reaches the same answer despite the complexity of the question and the wide range of possible answers. Is that not surprising (indeed astonishing)? I asked my interlocutor how he explains that there is almost no secular person who opposes abortions in any of the situations above. Whence the holy spirit that rests on our secular cousins and shows them so clearly where the line between a fertilized cell and a human being passes, and measures out for them exactly how grave it is to take life in such a case? Where has the stringent policy regarding the sanctity of human life disappeared, the policy that is supposed to prevent us from entering even into doubtful killing in the whole range of gray situations between fertilization and personhood, or in all the other intermediate cases described above and the like?
The highly elaborate thesis that presents this decision as a balancing of partial life-value against hardship may perhaps explain the position of one individual or another who thinks that in this case the line is crossed, but not the wondrous consensus that has arisen on this question among everyone regarding all the circumstances and situations. Nor does it explain why, in the other intermediate cases, those same people strongly oppose similar decisions and insist that one must not draw lines in questions of the value (sanctity?) of life. In complex questions one would expect many and varied opinions, but here, for some reason, the question seems very simple to people. The pathos that accompanies the discourse about the value of life and the prohibition of murder somehow disappears when abortions and fetuses are under discussion.
Two more claims
My interlocutor claimed against me that my own position too is based on the assumption that the fetus is a human being, and therefore I should not be surprised that others rely on a different or opposite starting assumption. Just as, in my view, they cannot determine that it is not a human being, in their view I too cannot determine that it is. I told him that there is a clear asymmetry between the two positions: he (= my interlocutor) determined that a fetus at one stage or another is not a human being (in his view that is the case until birth), whereas I do not determine that it is a human being, but only argue that it is difficult to determine whether it is a human being and therefore one should be stringent and forbid it (as in all other cases of doubt involving human life). Beyond that, my claim is not against someone who specifically argues that a fetus is not a human being and therefore it is permissible to take its life, but against secular society, which as one block supports the same conception without a drop of critical scrutiny and without a drop of diversity in thought. Even if there is room for this complicated claim, I find it hard to accept that everyone there just happened, by chance, to arrive at exactly it.
Another claim he raised against me was that by the same logic one could also say that lettuce has consciousness and a soul, and ask how we can eat it. Not to mention animals (incidentally, many opponents of eating animals are ardent supporters of abortion. Only the god of logic can explain it)[2], or computers[3]. I told him that there is a difference between a claim we all agree on, even if we have no way to prove it, and a claim we all agree is not simple. After all, both you and I agree that a head of lettuce is not a human being and that its life has no value. True, we have no way to prove that, just as with many other assumptions. Therefore, if someone comes along and feigns innocence, we will not be able to answer him. But the ethical status of a fetus, even on your own view, is complex and not unequivocal. Is it really clear to you that it is a kind of lettuce? It is obvious that there is a nontrivial line beyond which one may see it as a human being. For some reason it is clear to you that this line passes at birth, and for some reason it is clear to me that it does not. In other words, with regard to fetuses we are not dealing with an inability to prove a correct claim (that they are not human beings), but with a claim that is probably not entirely correct. I am not asking abortion supporters for their proof that a fetus is not a human being. What I am claiming is that a fetus too possesses some degree of humanity, and therefore you have no tools to determine how grave taking its life is, or what may justify it. This is an altogether different claim from the lettuce-and-computer argument.
So what is the explanation after all?
The situation is nothing short of astonishing. A society that keeps enlightenment on its lips and critical thinking as its guiding light goes like a herd of zombies after an absurd idea in full unanimity. Intelligent people raise absurd arguments to support such a problematic position, which only sharpens the perplexity. How and why does this happen? Why does no one there take the unpopular position that sees the fetus as an intermediate state of life, one that may not be taken? On a moral question that touches on the prohibition of murder and the value of human life, I would have expected at least differences of opinion, not such sweeping unanimity. How does one arrive at absurdities such as the claim that using stem cells for medical research is forbidden because they have the potential to become human beings, while taking the lives of fetuses is permitted? People live with these contradictions without batting an eye, and that demands explanation.
To the best of my understanding, the explanation for this astonishing phenomenon is twofold. In stage A it begins with considerations of convenience. We ardently champion the value of life as long as it does not inconvenience us. The moment it harms our convenience, life—and morality along with it—can go to hell. Add to this the sexual permissiveness that leads to quite a few of these cases, and our enlightened cousins are not willing to give it up for any price in the world. But even that is not a sufficient explanation, because many of those who champion women’s ‘freedom of choice’ are certainly prepared to pay considerable costs for the sake of various values, and especially for the sake of saving lives (including animal lives) throughout the universe. It therefore seems that there is a stage B as well, in which tribal cohesion comes to our aid. After all, the ones who oppose abortion are the religious—the benighted, coercive, fossilized people who will soon be closing our streets and throwing us into the sea. Does an enlightened creature like you want, or is he willing, to find himself on their side, heaven forbid, against science, enlightenment, and progress? How shall we defend the supreme value of sexual permissiveness for every boy and girl? Soon they will send us back to Bnei Brak and the shtetl. In such a situation it becomes a Torah commandment to express a sharp and unequivocal position against them.
And so, if the religious preach against abortion, the secular must line up as one in favor of it. Thus all the enlightened, moral, and critical people recite the same nonsensical slogans about a woman’s right over her body and her right and freedom to choose, or protests against the objectification of women, in a single voice and with the very same words, like a herd of moon-struck followers marching behind a few demagogic pipers. Needless to say, this is the enlightened and open public, endowed with critical thinking (the sovereign individual; see in the previous column), not the benighted religious people devoid of critical sense (the rabbinic person). It is worth noticing how far tribalism reaches, to the point that even positions touching on murder and the value of human life are determined blindly by it. If the Republicans are against it, the Democrats are in favor. If the religious are against it, the secular are in favor. And so millions of children are murdered in Israel (more than in the Holocaust). The Efrat Association, headed by Dr. Shussheim, which tries to fight this mass slaughter, is showered with torrents of contempt, mockery, and hatred. Fine, oppose them—but is it impossible to understand their position? How does one manage to present precisely them as the villains in this story? If they succeed in saving a child or a family, is that not reason to rejoice? Certainly not. Simply because they are on the wrong side of political correctness, the force responsible for the values and enlightenment of the proper society we have built here.
I once mentioned that Richard Dawkins wrote that in every society there are good people who do good deeds and bad people who do bad deeds. But only in religious society can there be good people who do bad deeds. By paraphrase of his words one may say that in every society there are intelligent people who make intelligent arguments and foolish people who make absurd arguments. But only in liberal-secular society are there intelligent people who make foolish arguments (well, not only there, but mainly there).
And what about the hardships?
Still, one cannot ignore the fact that there is another side to the dilemma. After all, those who oppose abortions seemingly ignore the hardships of women and families. What do they propose for that woman who, in the name of the value of life, is supposed to give birth to a child and raise it against her will, sometimes out of severe hardship?
First, the starting point is that whoever brings a child into being is indeed responsible to give birth to it and support it. This applies especially when the considerations are as shabby as ‘it doesn’t suit us right now.’ That certainly does not justify taking life under any circumstances. Of course, if we are dealing with more severe hardship, it is certainly important to find systemic social solutions. This is especially true if the pregnancy is not the woman’s initiative or negligence (in which case there is at least some basis for demanding that she bear hardship and accept the consequences of her actions), but the result of rape. If we obligate a girl who was raped to give birth to her baby, that creates extremely severe hardship, and it is doubtful how much she can cope with it; we may not ignore that.
And yet the starting point is that even if this is not exactly murder in the strict sense, it is still some kind of murder (something akin to murder), and therefore the obvious conclusion is that suitable social solutions must be found for these babies, but certainly not that we should permit killing them. Society must offer reasonable solutions for these children in institutions or adoptive families, but not permit them to be killed. Just as, in the case of a baby or child whose parents cannot care for him, no one imagines the suggestion of taking him to a clinic and having a man in a white coat quietly and gently murder him with a knife. If this is human life, the solution of taking it is not on the table. The hardships must be solved in other ways.
As stated, the fundamental question is whether we are willing to recognize that this is life and that abortion means taking it. If so, the other questions become secondary. One side of the equation is more primary and fundamental, and the other sides derive only from it. That is why I argued that despite the apparent symmetry (described above with arguments A and B), the religious side in this debate makes substantive arguments, whereas the secular side behaves with intellectual and moral dishonesty.
Are these considerations entrusted to the professional guild[4]
I have not entered here into the troubling question of how we allow the professional guild of physicians to determine ethical rules and screen candidates by them, thereby imposing on the field of medicine and on those who work in it certain moral positions (secular ones) that are by no means agreed upon. The very fact that a committee of professionals from the guild interviews a candidate and sorts him according to worldviews is itself a scandal. Who appointed them to determine what is ethically right and wrong? What in their medical training authorizes them to do that? The scandal is vastly intensified when this screening dictates to candidates a worldview that is morally absurd, so that anyone who does not espouse it and is unwilling to kill in circumstances that seem to the committee members appropriate will not be admitted to medical school. In the State of Israel, one who refuses to kill is not admitted to become a doctor. Incredible as it sounds.
Morality and Jewish law
Ironically, this post was written from an entirely secular point of view. Notice that I spoke only about moral considerations, and these are after all supposed to be shared by me and by any secular person. Actually, Jewish law may be more lenient on the issue of abortions, since there are halakhic sources that suggest defining a fetus as a person only from some point during the pregnancy onward (forty days, three months, and the like). But such considerations, even if one accepts them, are halakhic considerations concerning the halakhic prohibition You shall not murder (‘You shall not murder’), and they have absolutely nothing to do with the moral prohibition on murder (see column 15).
What emerges from here is that the moral examination of this question is incomparably more stringent than its halakhic examination. In other words, the secular person ought to be much more stringent than his religious counterpart on the question of abortion, certainly not less so. That is why it is so frustrating that these arguments find no receptive ear among secular people, for whom morality is indeed supposed to be a guiding light (and usually in fact is). This is not Jewish law but morality. It is not some religious eccentricity but a simple and correct moral consideration. Arguments such as the freedom to choose and a woman’s right over her body, and arguments against the objectification of women, are nothing but politically correct demagoguery that blindly supports murder for irrelevant reasons.
Appendices:
- Letter to the Minister of Health on termination of pregnancy
- Legal opinion on termination of pregnancy
- Petition to the High Court of Justice on termination of pregnancy in Israel
- Response to the petition to the High Court of Justice
- Article on the petition on the Walla site
- Interview on the Channel 12 News morning program on the subject
[1] By the way, if it is impossible to stop him in another way, in my personal opinion it is permissible to kill him. See my article on this here.
[2] This reminds me that I once heard Prof. Steinberg describe his experiences at an ethics conference in Europe that dealt with the use of stem cells. In certain European countries their use is forbidden because of their potential to create a human being, and therefore such use is regarded as murder (this is the prevalent Christian view; they are much stricter than Jews in these matters). Needless to say, in those same countries abortion is of course permitted. Steinberg said that he was unable to get from his interlocutors any reasonable explanation for this logical-ethical scandal.
[3] On this matter see my remarks in column 35.
Discussion
Listen, Rabbi, you need an editor. You could have shortened the column by at least a third… a lot of repetition of the same idea.
I don’t think the comparison to a retarded person or a murderer is a good one. There we are dealing with a person who lacks certain functions, whereas here the question is whether this is a person at all. It sounds like you also agree that sperm and egg cells are not a person (and it would be interesting to hear what you’d say about a fertilized egg: do you oppose destroying frozen embryos, or do you think they should be kept in a freezer forever because after all they are human beings?). The question of where the line is drawn is a good question, but it is not similar to the question regarding people with partial functioning (perhaps one could compare it to the other side: people on the verge of death, and there too many do not see a problem of murder once certain functions have ceased, and presumably you too do not wait for total decomposition in order to define someone as dead, but are satisfied with functions like breathing, pulse, and brain activity).
After all, according to your pathos-laden line of argument, one should also oppose the killing of sperm cells, because it is not clear where the boundary lies. The fact is that the line passes somewhere, only it isn’t clear where; and when it is clear to us that the line passes somewhere (sperm), we do not compare this to a partial person but to a non-person.
The claim that it is implausible that everyone agrees a fetus is not a person on the basis of deep thought is a good one, but it is just an ad hominem against the other side in the debate. So fine, everyone is stupid (except you), but that does not prove your position in any way.
As for the prohibition “You shall not murder,” even if there is no overlap, it is clearly a moral prohibition. It is true that when it enters halakhah it undergoes juridification, and that is how the lack of overlap is created. In any case, even if we assume that the prohibition of murder is because of harm to hod shebeyesod with no connection to morality, one still has to ask why killing a fetus does not involve such harm. The plausible answer to that question is that halakhah does not see the fetus as a person. Halakhah may not speak (on your view) in the moral field, but it is reasonable that its determination regarding killing a fetus derives from an evaluative factual claim whose content is that a fetus is not a person. That evaluative-factual determination can be transferred to the moral field as well.
Very interesting.
There is indeed a complex issue here with two sides, but remaining with the conclusion that this is a complex issue is appropriate in the beit midrash (of whatever kind) or in philosophical inquiry; when it comes to an issue in which people are forced to make actual decisions every day, it does not help to say that it is complex. After all, according to what you wrote, any distinction between cases and the circumstances that led to the abortion request is arbitrary, since this is murder; and so too any division according to stages of fetal development. According to the position you presented above, even using the morning-after pill constitutes murder, since we have no ability at all to point to any other moment at which a person emerges from the moment the egg is fertilized.
In addition, it seems to me that you present the supporters’ position somewhat extremely, even if there really is an overly strong underlying assumption of a woman’s right over her body. Most people who address the issue do distinguish between stages in the formation of the child, and the committee that approves abortions does as well, being more lenient at the beginning of pregnancy and becoming stricter as it progresses. There may indeed be moral arbitrariness in this, but practically one cannot avoid such distinctions, and the fact is that halakhah did so as well.
By the way, if we are talking about statistics on the matter, in Israel there are relatively few abortions, and most of them (over 60%) take place at the beginning of pregnancy (up to 7 weeks). After 23 weeks fewer than 1.5% of abortions take place, and I believe these are the harder circumstances—usually medical ones that were not identified earlier. One can certainly challenge the morality of that decision. But to say that women can abort just because the pregnancy did not come at a convenient time—I don’t think many would support that, and legally the committee also cannot allow it (if they use various pretexts to approve it anyway, that is a grave scandal).
A few more things worth noting:
1. The number of abortions in Israel per year is estimated at 20,000 reported abortions plus another 20,000 illegal ones, which makes abortion the leading cause of death, and quantitatively equivalent to all the other causes combined (cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, traffic accidents, terror, etc.). Unlike the other causes of death, abortion is a cause that can be prevented relatively easily and quickly, and with almost no financial investment.
2. About 99% of requests to the pregnancy termination committee receive approval for an abortion, even though by law there are clear criteria for approving an abortion that are not enforced by the committee, whose hand is inexplicably very light on the trigger.
3. Efrat is not involved so much on the political-public plane (to the best of my knowledge), but rather on the civil-economic plane, by appealing to the kindness and compassion of women considering abortion, and providing them financial assistance when needed. In the United States there are dozens if not hundreds of organizations that are active also on the political front, among other things, and in Israel there is not even a single such organization. In general, the public discourse in Israel on this subject is for some reason far thinner than in the rest of the world.
4. In the United States, until 1973 abortions were forbidden by law, and what changed that situation was the judicial ruling in Roe v. Wade, which held that the law prohibiting abortions was unconstitutional. In the ruling itself it was written that the court did not presume to determine the point at which life begins, but only held that legally the fetus does not have the status of a “person,” and therefore the woman’s right prevails unless defined otherwise by the legislature.
5. Regarding cases of rape and incest, one can think of solutions such as placing the child with the welfare authorities or for adoption.
A question—why do you call the other side “our cousins” and not “our brothers”?
Who said it is only a potential? My claim is that this is a person in some state, and the problem is that I do not see how one can draw the line so that a fetus is certainly not a person.
If there’s a volunteer, I’ll consider it.
1. My claim about the consensus was meant to show that the discourse is being conducted defectively, not to prove my claim itself.
2. Regarding a fertilized egg, there is only a potential for life, but there still is no life there and no organs. In any case, I am prepared to accept a claim that they should not be destroyed at all, or that they may be destroyed when there is a lighter reason than one that would justify an abortion. When there is a vague line, that does not mean there is no line at all. The transition from a heap to a non-heap is vague, and yet it is still clear that one pebble is not a heap and a million are a heap.
3. The definition of a person is evaluative, and therefore it certainly can depend on the normative context involved. There can be a definition of a person on the moral plane that differs from the halakhic definition. Precisely because this is not about a fact but about an evaluative definition, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that the line passes at the same place.
4. And one more stylistic note. When it comes to public legitimization of mass murder without any justification, I tend toward pathos. What can I do?!
I deliberately did not speak about the policy of the committees or the law, but about the discourse and public attitudes. There is a significant difference between them. The committees merely turn a scandalous blind eye, but their norms do indeed take into account differences of age and stage and circumstances. But in the public discourse this does not happen, and the liberals’ criticism of the very existence of committees is well known (who are they to decide for the woman?!).
It is an ironic expression. Like “our leftist cousins,” “our liberal cousins,” “our postmodern cousins”…
It seems to me that the discussion is not whether a fetus is already defined as a person or not, but whether a woman is allowed to kill part of her own body (which in principle is permitted), even though the fetus is in fact another person.
A similar question would be whether one Siamese twin is permitted to kill the other (if that is possible at all. I don’t know).
2. What do you mean, “there is no life there”? That is exactly the discussion—when there is life and when there is not. If the two of us are looking at a collection of pebbles and I think it is not a heap while you think it is, then probably heaps of pathos will not convince me to change my mind (and even if you tell me that in my opinion there is “no justification whatsoever” without giving any justification for your own view, that probably won’t convince me either—strange fellow that I am).
3. Theoretically there could be a difference, but here “the burden of proof is on the claimant,” and that claimant is you. If we again take the example of the heap—the simple assumption for me is that it has one definition. Whoever wants to argue otherwise has to give some reason for his claim. To say that the definition of the beginning of life for the halakhic prohibition of murder differs from the definition of life in another matter requires some distinction. Of course, you can also argue, in your absurd way of seeing halakhah as something with no connection to morality or to anything else recognizable, that the prohibition of murder has no connection at all to the concept of life, and then indeed our paths part ways; but it seems to me you have not yet gone that far (though it is not correct to say “not yet” here, since you are actually moving in the opposite direction).
I didn’t understand. Obviously a Siamese twin has no permission whatsoever to kill his brother (there is no technical impediment; it can be done) if others are forbidden to do so. There is no difference whatsoever between him and any other person. The same applies to the woman.
2. Indeed. But unlike a heap of stones, if we are dealing with capital matters, you too are careful not to enter even into doubt. I do not buy the line that for you, or for anyone else, a fetus is not even a doubtful life. That is nonsense. I am not especially impressed if this doesn’t convince you, just as I would not be impressed if when I say 2+3=5 some fool is not convinced. If there is a person who has a firm position regarding a fetus, then indeed he will not be convinced, but what can I do—I find it hard to believe there is such a person (at least after he is confronted with the arguments that show him he is simply captive to liberal propaganda).
3. I disagree. There is no reason whatsoever that there should be a connection between them. But this is not an important question for the discussion, so it is a shame to waste time on it. To each his own absurd ways…
Of course it’s not simple, and here too there is a question where the line passes—one may amputate his leg; may a person with two heads do so? etc.
What I mainly wanted to point out is that if you shift the discussion from the question whether this is a person to whether this is a separate person, many of the contradictions you left to the god of logic are resolved. And the argument about the woman’s right over her body becomes clearer as well (it turns from a pragmatic/economic argument into an essential argument about the core of the discussion).
2. I think this simply stems from your synthetic weakness. It does not bring you to any conclusion about a fetus, only to doubt, but it is so strong that you do not believe anyone else can think anything with certainty. For some reason, regarding a fertilized egg you do not embrace the doubt nearly as much, but only allow others to forbid destroying them. Also regarding sperm and egg separately, it is not clear where you suddenly get certainty from, and you do not derive a moral prohibition on wasting seed or destroying frozen eggs.
Take a thought experiment: right now you are dead; your heart stops beating, your brain stops sending electrical signals, and the blood stops flowing in your arteries. But you come back to life in another 9 months, healthy and whole just as you were before you died, all on condition that no one cuts off your head while you are dead. So would cutting off your head while you are dead count as murder, or not? If you say yes, it counts as murder, I’ll answer you in kind that you are confused, because only potentially are you a living person; in reality, right now you are dead, so the act is perfectly kosher, since matters must be judged by their present state and not by the potential latent in them. Clearly it is absurd to think that way; and here the situation is even more extreme, because here you really are defined as dead in every respect (and therefore for those 9 months you do not have the status of a person at all), whereas with a fetus one can argue that it is alive, thinks, feels, and so on…
More power to you.
I have always been amazed by this phenomenon. It is clear to any observer that the radical liberal does not support carrying out ‘abortions’ only when there is no choice, but rather desires the existence of abortions. You see it again and again, and bizarre arguments like ‘a woman’s right over her body’ (even a minute before birth?) are clearly only a cover story. Even after reading the illuminating article, it seems to me that the meaning of the matter is still obscure.
Perhaps the words of ‘Maasiyahu Leibniz’ here https://youtu.be/IlLeF7qzhxU
will cause some further reflection among supporters of killing fetuses?
I identify with almost everything, except that I am not sure the sharp separation you draw between halakhah and morality is correct in this case.
The heap paradox says that one cannot determine where the line passes, but that does not mean there are no situations that are clearly on one side of the line (for example, one item is certainly not a heap, nor are two).
The 40 days set by halakhah (for bloodshed, not for wasting seed) are because the fetus is “mere water” and has no form of limbs (or in other words, a cluster of cells), that is, far beyond the heap-line.
So true, perhaps one could argue that even at 41 days the doubt has not yet begun (and presumably not all fetuses develop at the same rate, and moreover the 40 days are not counted from the beginning of pregnancy but from intercourse, and the pregnancy can begin quite some time after intercourse). Clearly there is here the setting of a boundary and a defining cut, as expected from a legal determination, but apparently the halakhic consideration is not detached from the simple (and complicated) moral question of when a human being begins to be a human being, and when cutting off his life is bloodshed.
I disagree. These are not two questions: if it is a person then it is necessarily separate. And certainly such a complex and unintuitive position is unlikely to appear among all the people in a group.
In general, I think you make life easy for yourself when you imagine the other side as a herd of fools following the liberal wind. That may explain the view of a particular so-and-so—what made this otherwise wise person commit such nonsense—but in the end, after I have explained that so-and-so got it from such-and-such and such-and-such from someone else, there are still people who invented this idea. Those people presumably did not think that every murder for the sake of women’s freedom is justified, but rather probably thought that a fetus is not quite alive. So yes, apparently there are such people.
It seems to me that a large number of rabbis who permit abortion (in certain situations of course, and not sweeping permission as in secular society) also do not do so under the influence of this liberal spirit—which they in fact oppose vigorously (and therefore they also oppose abortions in general)—but out of the assumption that a fetus is not a person.
Another thought that occurred to me last night is that it is not at all certain that the matter resembles the heap paradox. Seemingly the moral prohibition on murder depends on the soul (there is no problem murdering a golem), and although I am no expert on souls, it seems plausible to me that this is a dichotomous matter—either there is a soul or there isn’t. The vagueness, then, does not stem from the thing itself as in the definition of a heap, but only from our ability to identify the soul.
The difference is between what exists and what could be. When you cut off the head of someone in suspended life, you are not just preventing a dead person from living—a living person, with independent thought, everything he was, is going to perdition. A fetus (up to a certain stage of development) was nothing, did not think, and there is no important thing being lost.
Usually in our region “our cousins” serves as a nickname for the descendants of Ishmael.
I just remembered that a few months ago I saw a video about Rabbi Elyashiv in which it is stated that he ruled that an embryo created through in vitro fertilization, before being implanted in a woman’s womb, may be destroyed (the discussion was about embryos known to carry some genetic disease). The ruling was reported by Rabbi Prof. Steinberg starting at minute 1:08:20 of the video at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX6JHWmZBTg
This comes out of the view of Rabbi Ishmael in the Gemara in Sanhedrin 57b:
Rabbi Yaakov bar Acha found written in the aggadic book of the school of Rav: A Noahide is executed on the testimony of one judge, and by one witness, without forewarning, by the testimony of a man and not by that of a woman, and even by a relative. In the name of Rabbi Ishmael they said: also for fetuses. From where are these matters derived? Rav Yehuda said: As the verse says, “And surely your blood of your lives will I require”—even by one judge; “at the hand of every beast”—even without forewarning; “will I require it, and at the hand of man”—even by one witness; “at the hand of every man’s brother”—from a man and not from a woman; “his brother”—even a relative. In the name of Rabbi Ishmael they said: also for fetuses. What is Rabbi Ishmael’s reason? As it is written: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, within man, his blood shall be shed”; what is a man that is within a man? You must say: this is a fetus in its mother’s womb.
That is, before the fetus is in its mother’s womb, it does not fall under the category of “a man within a man,” and therefore there is no bloodshed here.
The question arises whether morally this too would be permitted. Prima facie it seems to me that since before the embryo is implanted in its mother’s womb it requires active intervention in order to keep it alive (as opposed to a fetus already in the womb, which will live without intervention), there is really no destruction of a fetus here, since in any case it could not have lived unless it were implanted in some womb. This is very similar to the distinction between active and passive euthanasia.
That’s a good distinction, and I also gave it some thought, but it doesn’t seem essential to me. What would we say about a baby one second after leaving the womb? One might think, what have we already lost if we murder him—one and a half seconds of infantile thought, which is doubtful to contain anything resembling intelligence. And yet killing a baby even one second after it comes out of the womb counts as murder in every respect, and none of us would dream of doing it, for the very same reasons that people do choose to have an abortion.
First, the article is interesting and thought-provoking. The distinction that this is a secular-moral discourse and not necessarily a religious one is important and sharpens the discussion. As for the matter itself, to claim that the “liberals” are a cohesive herd making absurd arguments is itself a rather absurd argument. It would be wiser and more useful to try to look for the “grain of truth” found with one’s opponent.
Everyone agrees that murder is wrong; the question is where an intermediate case stands in relation to murder. The fetus is in an intermediate state between a living person and some other partial entity, as explained in the post. Like other gray areas, it turns out that society is what sets the boundaries for itself—when something counts as permitted killing and when it counts as forbidden murder. If the case under discussion (abortions, killing a terrorist, the death penalty, and the like) is really very similar to cold-blooded murder, then clearly it should be forbidden. Another possibility is that it is actually clear that the act is not murder, but the act should still be forbidden because of the slippery-slope effect.
What reason is there to forbid abortions? Clearly this is not really murder, because in extreme cases such as rape everyone would permit it (except extreme Christians). It is also clear that liberals are more sensitive to women’s status, whereas conservatives aspire to preserve the existing social order (that is the definition of conservatism).
It remains to ask: will permitting abortions cause a slippery slope, so that people will start killing babies, children, and adults? This is a strange argument that only conservatives can make (similar to the claim that permitting same-sex relations will lead to bestiality, another absurd claim). It is also empirically refuted. In general, slippery-slope arguments are to be expected more among conservatives, who by nature live in a state of anxiety over changes (that, after all, is what drives their conservatism). So it turns out that, first of all, the article is interesting and thought-provoking.
The challenge from the case of Elor Azaria is a good one, but that same question stands in full force for the religious-conservatives as well. Why do they cry out about the sanctity of life in the case of a fetus in its mother’s womb, yet deny the sanctity of the life of a living, neutralized person (an Arab)?
In the case of Elor Azaria, conservatives are not worried about a slippery slope, apparently because the person in question is an Arab (toward Jewish terrorists they would probably show more mercy). It follows that, given the existence of many nationalists and racists in society, the liberals’ concern about a slippery slope (down which the conservatives may slide) is a reasonable concern (though one can argue about this, and such arguments do indeed exist within liberal society).
Indeed. That is precisely why I use this expression ironically.
The distinction sounds reasonable, but I have no way to take a definitive position. In essence this is about not implanting it, not about destroying it. That seems permitted to me.
I am not talking about a slippery slope. You are confusing epistemology with ontology. The problem is not in my information but in reality itself. It is not a doubt whether the fetus is alive; rather, the fetus has tenuous life.
The objection against conservatives regarding Elor Azaria can of course be raised, but I do not agree with it. They are not disparaging his life as a human being; rather, they argue that he should be killed under the law of a pursuer in order to prevent danger. And indeed, regarding Jewish terrorists there is more room not to kill them (without any connection to mercy), since the danger they pose is smaller. To the extent that they constitute a pursuer, they should be killed to the same degree.
I completely agree that the heap paradox does not mean there are no clear cases. On the contrary, I wrote in several places (and here too) that there are.
As for halakhah, I wrote here that the halakhic line and the moral line do not necessarily pass in the same place (precisely because the question is not from when he is a person—a contentless question to which there is no answer—but from when it is forbidden to kill him).
Two questions for you, Rabbi Michael:
1. What is your opinion on the “morning-after” pill (some of which prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb)? Here too, do you have moral doubts, or is it clear that this is such an initial state that it cannot be treated as tenuous life, and therefore should be forbidden morally?
2. As is known, the basic halakhah instructs that the fetus of a woman being led out to execution is aborted, because one does not delay an execution. Do you feel that there is a clash here between morality and halakhah (or between two moral directives), and what is your opinion in this case?
1. I do have doubts, because this is an active prevention of implantation. If it were passive non-implantation (that is, not taking the egg to implant it in a womb), it would be easier. I assume there is still more room for leniency here in a case of severe distress.
2. Indeed, a clash between morality and halakhah. Perhaps there is also a moral aspect to not delaying the execution.
Hello Rabbi Michael,
I only recently came across and got to know this site, so first of all, more power to you. Even though there is much with which I do not agree, it is fascinating and interesting (over the years I have read quite a few of the rabbi’s articles and responses; I confess without shame that I have not yet gotten to the books…).
This evening I read the last two articles/posts, and both deal with important topics. The reason I was really happy about the coincidence of the two articles appearing near each other is that, whether by chance or not, I think there is a connection between them.
The question of the uniformity and shallowness of the discussion on abortion has occupied me quite a bit recently (the asymmetry you presented at the outset, which is embodied in the names by which the two positions are called—pro life vs. pro choice—and as such it practically cries out to heaven).
And I came to a conclusion rooted in the previous article: that is to say, in the previous article you touched on an inherent contradiction in the Western worldview. There are of course moral people with noble behavior, but the very existence of a secular moral doctrine without an external system of good and evil is highly doubtful, to put it mildly. Yet of course in everyday life the average person can live with this in peace, apparently because the good is already implanted in us, normal people, in one way or another (whatever its source may be).
But of course there are questions that cannot be answered within a human/secular moral doctrine and the like. A good example of this is abortion. I do not think there is any human source that can define a specific moment at which the definition of “living” begins. That good implanted in us causes the average person, even one who supports abortions, to distinguish for example between an abortion in the 5th week and an abortion in the 32nd week, but without the ability to explain why.
It follows that abortion is one of those places where a Western-materialist worldview that assumes the possibility of a moral doctrine is greatly undermined. And when the very foundations of one’s existence are undermined, the reaction becomes more defensive and less substantive.
Thank you. I would only note that even in halakhah, the determination of from when abortion is forbidden is not made on the basis of verses but on reasoning, and therefore there is no impediment to secular morality also arriving at such a criterion.
I’m not sure what you mean—whether a verse is needed for the prohibition itself… and the stages are themselves disputed. But that is not the main point: after all, we can see with our own eyes that there are secular systems that have set different rules according to periods of pregnancy (say, a distinction between the trimesters as determining a sufficient reason for abortion). But I do not think secular morality can truly explain to itself why a fetus at the 12th week, say, may be aborted even for reasons of pure convenience, and so on.
And how would the halakhic person explain it? There too the determination is his, based on his own reasoning. What is the difference?
First of all, if we take, say, the 40th day: one can certainly discuss whether it is a derivative of a medical condition (say, the formation of organs) under ancient scientific knowledge known in the time of Hazal, or a metaphysical truth (say, “the infusion of a soul”). But either way, the determination is halakhic, and once determined, the religious person has a definition of a significant point in time. I do not see that even given all the medical information to all human beings, under the limitations of human reason, one can arrive at a logically necessary standard. Even given the information, anyone can set a different standard for when there will be a prohibition, and it will not be possible to attack this morally; from this it follows that human wisdom cannot establish a moral standard here.
As an aside, I would note that even regarding your remark about reasoning one could say that this is already a question of how you understand halakhah—a question that, according to your position, you would presumably have to answer differently than I would—but as I understand the matter, what is established as halakhah, whether it rests on reasoning or on a verse, is ultimately received as the same kind of halakhic determination (of course this is a statement with many ramifications, like the question whether a law professor sitting and discussing civil procedure has reasoning equivalent to that of a Torah scholar studying Bava Batra, say—but those ramifications would take us far beyond the present discussion).
You are completely missing the point, so I’ll repeat it again. If halakhah was determined by reasoning, then why can’t any gentile determine such a line by his own reasoning? Don’t look at a Jew today, but at the one who himself established that halakhah: an Amora, a Tanna, or a Rishon. What they knew how to do, any person can do. The advantage the Tannaim had over other people was their use of verses. If they did not derive this from a verse, then they used reasoning. That means there is a line of reasoning by which one can arrive at this boundary, so any gentile too can come up with such reasoning. Its acceptance as halakhah is irrelevant. In morality too, a person can accept as binding the determination of the great Rabbi Mr. Immanuel Kant, of blessed memory. Would that solve your problem?
I’m not missing it; I simply disagree with you… Let me ask it differently: take legal reasoning, for example, based mainly on logical constructs like migo and the like. In your opinion, is that part of Torah at all, or is it part of the body of legal knowledge that accumulated in Judaism, and there would be no point in studying it for someone who is not about to judge now or, say, become a lawyer?
But as I noted, that is not the main point. The point in my view is that there is a problem here with no possible solution by human reason. A person with a system of halakhic commitment has here an acceptance of halakhah as a practical guide—what is permitted and what is forbidden (and that is even if I accept your claim that halakhah and morality are on two different planes, a claim I am not sure I accept).
By contrast, for someone committed only to reason, a man of Western culture for example, there is no necessary solution here.
All I claimed was that the answer to your question—if there is no necessary solution, how is it that everyone converges on the same solution—is not “herd behavior, not wanting to side with the religious,” and so on, but that it comes to hide precisely this: that we have no intellectual tools to settle this question, meaning that reason cannot serve as a general guide in every possible moral domain.
To the best of my judgment, you are not disagreeing with me but insisting on not understanding. I’m done.
Thank you. Regarding 1, it is hard for me to see as a doubtful life, or as ‘a little alive,’ something that has no level, even a rudimentary one, of consciousness. And a fertilized egg has no more consciousness than any other cell in the body.
When there is not even the beginning of differentiation into nerve cells, it is hard to see this as a doubtful life.
True, someone can define “alive” differently, but personally I find it hard to accept such definitions. What makes us different from inanimate matter is feeling/consciousness/sensation (and when I speak of sensation, I do not mean every reaction to the environment. As far as I’m concerned, a thermostat does not know whether it is cold or hot).
Indeed, that is correct. Therefore there is certainly room to be lenient at such a stage. Still, the slippery-slope question and the potential do not completely empty this of content. As I mentioned, there are countries that prohibit stem-cell research because they view even them as the beginning of life.
As for a thermostat, I completely agree. See article 35: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9E%D7%94%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%92%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9C-%D7%93/
But even feeling and consciousness and sensation are not an absolute condition. I do not know what a newborn baby or profoundly retarded people have in these respects.
Recently I thought of a moral argument that could justify abortions: after all, the parents are the ones who gave life to the child, and therefore logic says they have permission to “regret it” or take back what they gave. One can see this in the wayward and rebellious son, where the parents can decide on the son’s execution. Also in the story of Job, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” one can see that whoever gives has the right to take back what he gave without our making claims against him. On the other hand, someone who gave his friend a gift has no right to take the gift back after the act of acquisition. It seems that the “act of acquisition” that effectuates the gift of life in our case is the moment of formation or the act of intercourse. But even according to this logic, if the parents, say, used contraception and there was a malfunction and it didn’t work properly, perhaps one could say that this was a “mistaken transaction,” meaning that the parents did not intend to “convey” life to the child as a gift, and therefore they have a moral mandate to “cancel the transaction.” After birth, the presumption is that the parents agreed to give the gift even if it began without intention. Likewise, in cases of rape or severe congenital defects one can argue that there was a mistaken transaction here. What do you think of this argument?
It seems problematic to me. Life is not given to the child. Without it he does not exist. Life is identical with him. As I wrote in the article on gratitude regarding wrongful birth. Beyond that, even in the case of the rebellious son, it is not the parents who can kill their child. They have to come to the court, and the court decides. The Mishnah also says that he is judged on account of what he will become, not that they simply kill him because they are taking back the life he received by virtue of a property right over it.
Beyond that, the parents do not give the child life. At most they are a necessary but not sufficient condition. The food he eats also gave him life (without it he would not have lived). And so too many other factors.
The fact is that once a child is born, his parents certainly have no right to kill him, and this consideration should have been relevant there as well.
Regarding a child who has been born, at least nowadays the assumption is that if they did not abort him during the pregnancy, that means they had full intent regarding the “gift of life” to the child, and once there was full intent one cannot regret it. The time in which one can regret it is a reasonable time after discovery of the pregnancy (say, a number of weeks). According to this argument, it also gives moral justification for “abortions” carried out immediately after birth in places without technological access to abortions, as was done in third-world countries and in the ancient world with females. But after a reasonable time has passed since birth, the assumption is that the parents had full intent regarding the child, and therefore one can no longer regret it.
As for giving life to the child, it is not unreasonable to assume that the child’s soul/spirit existed before birth, and will exist after his death as well (survival of the soul), and that the parents gave him a vessel through which he could conduct himself in this world (the vessel = the body). There is also quite a bit of testimony about reincarnations and memories from previous lives. But even if we do not assume that, the analogy to an act of acquisition is the closest model we have by which we can analyze the moral dilemma using tools familiar to us.
As I said, I do not think it is plausible to discuss this in terms of acquisition and ownership over life. If a person cannot take his own life, he cannot take another’s life either, even if he was involved in creating it.
If you meant to compare it to the prohibition of suicide, what I recall is that the entire prohibition there is halakhic but not moral (or at least that the moral problem there is slight, and the problem is more halakhic). The whole argument I raised does not enter the halakhic plane of the issue.
It is not necessary to define ownership over life; one can compare it to a person who asks to enter some closed compound that is not owned by anyone, but physically only someone inside can allow entry to one requesting to come in from outside. One of the residents of that compound opened one of the gates for the one requesting entry and let him in. If that resident then expels the one requesting entry after some time because of some regret (meaning that he did not have full intent when opening the gate, or that under such circumstances he would not have agreed to let him in), then it seems to me that the one who asked to enter cannot morally complain against the one expelling him, since because he could have refrained from letting him in from the outset, he has the moral mandate to expel him. And especially in a situation where there was no full intent at the time of admission, the expeller’s moral mandate to expel is even stronger.
If so, then I probably did not understand the question. Morally speaking, there may be people who see the child’s life as the property of his parents, but I do not accept that even morally (if you ask them, presumably most of them would not agree to this definition. That is why they justify it by the woman’s right over her body and not by ownership of her son’s life). Beyond that, as I wrote, I do not think there is a child who receives life. They create him (as in the issue of wrongful birth).
There is evidence for your conception from the Mishnah in Bava Kamma: “A deaf-mute, an imbecile, and a minor—their injury is bad: one who injures them is liable, but if they injure others, they are exempt,” meaning that a minor who causes damage is not in the category of his father’s property damage like an ox; rather, even though he is a minor, he is under his own authority and not under his father’s authority. And intuition and common sense also indicate that there is a moral problem with abortion even in a case where the fetus was created by mistake without the parents’ intention. The question is whether there is room to take into account the arguments I raised above when assessing the severity of the moral wrong and the limits of the means it is appropriate to use in combating the phenomenon.
Again, these are halakhic sources. As for assessing the wrong—perhaps. But the principled prohibition remains in force.
Precisely here I tried to bring evidence from halakhah as an indication of legal truth (as in the HANDL formula), which has implications for the moral plane as well from a non-Jewish (but still theistic) point of view—or so it seems to me, at least if I understood correctly.
Further to the above, would abortion by the technique of removing the fetus and freezing it be morally permitted? (Like what is done in the process of in vitro fertilization.)
In addition, would abortion by severing the umbilical cord without directly harming the fetus itself be permitted / less bad? Prima facie this resembles a person disconnecting his fellow from a ventilator.
I didn’t understand the suggestion. What does it mean to freeze it? To leave it alive?
Severing the umbilical cord indirectly might perhaps be easier halakhically, but would cause it suffering.
Suppose for the sake of argument that it were possible to freeze a fetus in the early stages in the same way that one freezes a fertilized egg. The freezing preserves the fetus’s existing state, so that theoretically it could be thawed and implanted in another woman’s womb and thereby allowed to develop into a mature human being, but practically it is left frozen.
I assume that is indeed easier.
I also feel that there is something more moral than halakhic about abortion, but on reflection it is not clear that there really is such an opposition—
Why not simply assume that the liberal position accepts the premise that “the fetus is its mother’s thigh”—that is literally what they are saying—“a woman’s right over her body.” Before birth, how is the embryonic cluster of cells different from all the other living cells in the woman’s body? Would you also morally forbid her to amputate her hand in a situation she sees as more beneficial, because the cells in her body are alive?
One can spin pilpulim from now until forever. You could also distinguish between a one-month-old fetus and a two-month-old fetus. The question is whether belly-logic like this is enough to permit murder. From when does the fetus stop being its mother’s thigh? Only once it is born? So then what is the distinction between different ages of the fetus (which is accepted in the world as well and not only in halakhah)? About this it was said: just because we compare, shall we act?!
I can also compare your child to a chair in your house (both are collections of atoms), and just as you are permitted to remove or break the chair in your house because it is your right over your home, so you are permitted to remove or kill the child because it is your right over your home.
With respect,
Surely, despite the reduction to absurdity, I think there is much more room to distinguish between before birth and after it than between different ages of the fetus. What I was trying to point out is that this is literally what liberals say, so what emerges here is a highly consistent and logical position.
The article is built on a reductio ad absurdum showing what an “abortion” of a living baby would look like, but in the plain meaning of the claim about a woman’s right *over her body* there lies the difference between a baby and a fetus.
The counterclaim—“whether belly-logic like this is enough to permit murder”—begs the question: the rabbi assumes this is murder (an extremely radical assumption), and from there attacks the supposedly inadequate reasoning for permitting it.
One can formulate the point in the article more subtly—
the claim that a woman should be free to make decisions,
and the claim that the fetus should be seen as part of the woman’s body,
are very different and distinct claims, and the overlap between them indeed was not an a priori necessity, since these are positions on completely different issues. But if one accepts the premise that a fetus is not a living creature (for example—the plain sense of the Gemara in Arakhin 7a), the main disagreement remains over the first claim, and therefore the overlap is not surprising.
In fact, one could even argue in the opposite direction:
The claim that aborting a fetus is murder consistently appears together with chauvinistic approaches that do not recognize a woman’s right to abort, even though there is no necessary overlap between those two positions either.
“Much more” and “much less” still are not a sharp distinction. What we have here is merely a speculation by whose power murder is permitted.
I have already answered everything you raised here, and I see no need to repeat myself again.
Rabbi Michi, more power to you. I have always been amazed by the shallowness of the discussion on this issue in Israel compared with the U.S., where even if most of the “pro-lifers” are religious (usually Catholics or evangelicals), they try to spark a serious discussion, and there certainly are also “pro-lifers” who are not basing themselves on religious arguments. See for example (I know the “scientific” thesis is not accepted by you):
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/pro-life-pro-science/549308/?utm_source=fbb y7
Politically, I think the situation in Israel is reasonable. The very fact that a committee is required shows that it is not treated as equivalent to trimming a fingernail, heaven forbid. On the other hand, adopting a halakhic standard (even that of the lenient authorities—those who in practice rely on the opinion of the Yaavetz, etc.) would provoke an intolerable religious war.
But I have never understood what is wrong with offering financial help to the mother so that she will not abort, or even planning to place the baby for adoption. When there are many parents yearning to adopt a baby, why can’t they be matched with a woman who wants to terminate a pregnancy? I asked people involved in this, and they told me it is trafficking in babies. But is abortion morally less problematic?
All true. Only regarding the committees, see the petition submitted by Oren Margalit mentioned above here, and you’ll see what the committees are worth.
An argument that is made, and I did not see you address it, is the claim of the superiority of the woman’s body over the life of the fetus. According to this claim, even if we are dealing with a person in every respect, murdering him would be permitted, but solely because he is inside the woman’s body. A woman has the right to remove the fetus from her body, and if he dies because of that, so be it. A woman’s right to decide what happens inside her body is superior to any other right that exists.
What do you say in relation to this claim?
I wrote what I say about that claim. It seems to me similar to the following claim: I have a right over my house (a man’s home is his castle), and therefore if there is an unwanted child (my own) wandering around there who does not want to leave, I will kill him.
Recently I came across an article written by a moral philosopher named Judith Thomson (it turns out she is a descendant of Rabbi Yaakov Emden), which presents several justifications for abortion even on the assumption that the fetus has a right to life from the moment of conception. The main points of the article are at this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion (there are three main arguments there).
The most famous argument presented in that article is the violinist argument, which basically says that if your kidneys were connected to some person so that that person could continue to live, then you have the right to disconnect the connection, even at the cost of the other person’s life. She analogizes this example to the case of abortion and thereby tries to justify it. I would be glad to hear what you think of that argument, and if you have the time/will/interest, also about the other two that appear in the link (the expanding child and people seeds).
Even if you do not agree with these justifications, are these arguments legitimate enough that someone who does agree with them deserves tolerant treatment from those who disagree with him (that is, should one refrain from coercion against abortions because of such arguments)?
I do not agree with that argument, for two reasons:
1. Because this connection was made by me (the mother who created the fetus was connected to it as a result of her actions). I cannot disconnect a person from an organ that I willingly donated to him. All the more so since this fetus is the handiwork of the mother and not just some random stranger in distress. She herself created the distress, and now in all her brazenness she takes back her organs and does not give the fetus the right to use them. In my opinion this is murder in every respect.
2. Beyond that, even if he was connected not by my will, disconnecting him now may perhaps be my right, but it is an evil act. Just as according to Rashi, a person must die rather than steal, because he recognizes a person’s right to his property and his right not to give it to save me. But still, that person is a wrongdoer and forbidden to do what he is doing (not to give his property). A parable for this is Zimri, where the Gemara says that he would have been permitted to kill Phinehas even though he had the option of ceasing to sin and then Phinehas would not have killed him. That of course does not mean that if Zimri had insisted on continuing to sin and killed Phinehas, he would have been doing a permitted act. It is not murder because he is permitted to defend himself, but clearly there is a claim against him to stop sinning (in general, and certainly when that also saves Phinehas).
Therefore, in principle I do not see a real justification here, and this does not prevent coercion. However, the question of coercion here is not simple in practice, because many people are convinced that this is the right act, and I doubt how useful such coercion would be.
1.
Regarding the concept of potential life, or its derivatives—partial life, some sort of life, and so on.
A cluster of cells in the first weeks—potential life.
Unfertilized sperm and egg—also potential life.
My wife says she has a headache tonight—there too we missed out on potential life.
My claim is that even when murder is extremely severe, and one does not want to transgress murder, not even in an ambiguous situation, not even in a partial definition, not even when no binding halakhic prohibition is in force, there still has to be a stage at which you say: the life-value of this potential is 0. Otherwise an absurdity is created, as I wrote above.
Week 10, for the sake of discussion, is some kind of life. And let us assume that if we did not sleep together, that is not “potential life” that was missed. And let us assume that indeed, as you claim, we do not know how to draw the line.
Weeks 1–3 unquestionably belong on the side where there is indeed potential, but there is no actuality whatsoever, not even partial actuality, of life. Like a couple deliberating whether to sleep together tonight and make a child, or not.
2.
Why in all the halakhic literature do rabbis take into account considerations such as the woman’s “sanity” (where it is quite clear that the fluid concept of sanity is stretched to the limit), how many other children there are in the house (what is that relevant to??).
True, the halakhic discussion is not the same as the moral one. I completely accept the distinction and the conception of being bound by both (and more power to you, and many thanks for the detailed explanations in the trilogy). But all the rabbinic treatments of the issue seem to be based on the *factual* claim that in the first weeks there is no life here. And in the later weeks there is real life, but not full life. The basis is a claim about reality, not morality and not halakhah.
Weeks 4–40 are different shades of gray. Weeks 1–3 at least—white. A baby outside—black.
3. What is the source for the fact that rabbis are wary of Postinor and of abortions in weeks 1–3 from the standpoint of halakhah?
Hello Rabbi, what do you think of the definition that a fetus is considered a person once a soul enters it? And if so, ostensibly one could go and see what kabbalistic sources say about this, even if not necessarily accept it, because I understood that although you think not everything there is tradition, there are still spiritual intuitions there in your opinion.
One can. I simply do not trust those sources.
But Rabbi Michi, if the fetus is only a potential and not an actual living creature, what moral problem is there here?