Q&A: Abortion After Rape
Abortion After Rape
Question
Setting Jewish law aside for the moment.
First, I think abortion is murder (albeit of a fetus, so less severe than ordinary murder), but murder does not necessarily have to be something wrong. We kill a pursuer, even a potential one; we kill innocent civilians when it has a major effect in favor of our security (like the bombing of Dresden or Japan); we disconnect terminally ill patients from machines, etc.
This is obviously playing with fire, and it is worth drawing the line as far away from murder as possible. But it seems to me that in the case of conception through rape, the killing (of a lower degree of life) is legitimate. But I’m not sure. The implications of bringing the child into the world are understood, so I won’t spell them out.
P.S. The female hostages are what brought this question to mind.
What is your view?
Answer
Conception through rape is a very problematic situation for the mother, but in my view it does not justify murder. At most, one could tell the mother to place the child for adoption or find some other solution for her.
Discussion on Answer
Search here on the site. I’ve answered this more than once.
Maybe up to 40 days it is fine and proper to abort?
If I may weigh in on the question: given reality as it is known today, it seems clear to me that abortion is close to murder, and in later stages of pregnancy perhaps even actual murder. But from a survey of how the Torah and Jewish law relate to fetuses, it seems that halakhically the status of a fetus is far from that. I am of course not referring to later halakhic decisors, but to the Torah and the Sages; there are several places from which one can infer an almost dismissive attitude toward fetal death. Does the Rabbi regard this as murder from a moral perspective or from a halakhic perspective?