Q&A: Abortion
Abortion
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently the issue of abortions in the U.S. has come up, and as usual the winds of that debate are blowing here too.
After discussing whether it is moral or not, a question came up for me about the role of the state. Let us assume that abortion is not moral at any stage; even so, one could still argue that it is not the state’s role to prohibit things that are morally forbidden, but rather to preserve order and prevent anarchy. Not outlawing the murder of an adult is of course anarchy, or a slippery slope to anarchy, and so the state prohibits it. The same goes for corporate law and similar things—the issue there is usually maintaining proper order. According to this, permitting abortions, which presumably would not create anarchy or undermine proper order, is not something the state needs to intervene in.
I realize this is a difficult claim.
Is it correct to say that insofar as this is the state’s role, then there is no reason for it to intervene? Is the claim that the state’s role is only to preserve sustainable proper order tenable, or is it refuted in a way that makes it impossible to maintain? And by the way, what is your opinion about the law (not about abortion itself)?
Answer
I don’t understand why it would be permissible to murder fetuses but forbidden to murder people. What more anarchy is there in this than in that? And if a person were to murder his little son who was just born, would that create anarchy? A person’s right over his home is very similar to a woman’s right over her body. In general, a person could also murder his wife because she’s moving around in his house and he has rights over his house.
See my opinion in column 73.
I haven’t read the column, but I think the analogy to breaking into a house isn’t precise. It would be more accurate to compare it to a situation in which I knowingly let someone into my house, and now he has no way of leaving except in another 9 months or in a coffin. Or more precisely: instead of knowingly letting him in, I knowingly took the risk of a kind of hospitality like this for reasons unrelated to hospitality, but at the end of the day I accepted that risk. In that case it’s no longer so clear to me that ownership over my body gives me the right to remove that “guest,” so to speak.