opinion
The Future Is Our Past
Unless We Act Now
BY BARBARA GOLDBERG GOLDMAN
I 16
MAY 12, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
No more thousands of dollars “cash up front or
no-can-do.” No more hanger images — images that
were not imaginary. Back then, “The Handmaid’s
Tale” might not have been read as science fiction.

Women were literally risking — and sometimes
losing — their lives to get abortions. Reports
about botched ones, depression, anxiety and
feelings of isolation were commonplace.

My college roommate, a dean’s list honor stu-
dent, was having an affair with a much older,
divorced man. Crying hysterically, lying in a fetal
position, she told me she was going to Florida
early the next morning for an abortion where it
was easier to find someone to do the “procedure”
and where nobody would know either of them. He
refused to marry her.

This young, brilliant woman whom I thought so
worldly was now distraught, helpless and threat-
ening suicide. Yet, she was one of the fortunate,
privileged ones. She had access to a bona fide
physician, and someone else was paying for it.

This was an “entitlement” typically afforded only
to white, middle-class women, not those of low
income and color.

The leaked Alito draft opinion overturning Roe
v. Wade suggests that the court might soon
propel us back to the era before Jan. 22, 1973.

The contempt for women and basic principles
of constitutional law evidenced by that opinion
are astonishing and outrageous. Women will still
have abortions, illegal or otherwise, depending
upon different state laws. Yet in many instances,
safety and accessibility will be questionable in
perhaps half of these United States. Horrific sce-
narios and outcomes, once ancient history, again
will become the burdensome reality for millions of
American women in states like Texas, Mississippi,
Oklahoma and Utah, just to name a few.

Why? A myriad of reasons, not the least of which
are three new justices nominated by a Republican
president who failed to receive the majority of the
popular vote and were confirmed by his lemmings
in the U.S. Senate. Three justices who apparently
either lied or craftily dodged the question during
their confirmation hearings.

What ifs abound. Had there been a Democratic
president and a Democratic Senate majority
during those years, American women now would
be safe. We cannot go back. We now must not
permit the fundamental norms of our society
and legal system to be ripped apart. To do so
would be horribly, painfully, inexcusably wrong.

Codifying Roe would prevent that from occurring.

But the unwillingness of Senate Republicans and
a couple of Senate Democrats to abolish the fili-
buster prevents the passage of such legislation.

Elections matter. This is about choice. We can
halt this assault on women and the bedrock
of American law. On Nov. 8, vote to increase
Democratic majorities in the Senate and the
House. Not doing so is placing at peril our bodies
and ourselves. JE
Barbara Goldberg Goldman is vice chair of the
Jewish Democratic Council of America, former
deputy treasurer of the Maryland Democratic
Party, and co-founder of Maryland Women for
Biden Harris.

xijian / E+
n January 1973, Carly Simon, Stevie Wonder, Elton
John, Roberta Flack and the O’Jays earned their
first Billboard No. 1 songs. We listened to their music
while driving in our cars, doing homework or just
hanging out. We followed the news by watching TV
and reading newspapers.

I had just started working for first-term U.S. Rep.

Barbara C. Jordan (D-Texas). In between constituent
services, speechwriting and reading and drafting
social legislative proposals, I also was reading Kurt
Vonnegut Jr., Frederick Forsyth and Gore Vidal,
authors topping The New York Times Best Sellers list.

I read and gave as gifts hard copies of Richard Bach’s
“Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” My all-time favorite
reference book was “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the
1970 female health bible. Unknowingly, the ground-
breaking chapter linking abortion to the freedom to
control our lives would soon become seminal. My
original copy still sits proudly on my shelf.

Richard Nixon had just won his second term by
a landslide, and societal tensions continued to
mount as bigotry and racism were in full bloom
despite advances made during the Civil Rights
era. Many establishments across America, primar-
ily, but not exclusively, in the South, still were seg-
regated, and even in Connecticut some beaches
remained “for whites only.”
Yet, we had conviction. We were determined to
right the wrongs. We were ready to fix the world,
poised to tackle our challenges, whatever the
odds. And with much anticipation, we waited for
the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, one
that could affect the lives of millions of women,
especially those who were disproportionately
poor or of color.

On Monday, Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court
issued its decision in favor of Jane Roe (Norma
McCorvey). The 7-2 decision ruled that the due
process clause of the 14th Amendment to the
United States Constitution provides a right to
privacy protecting a pregnant woman’s right to
choose whether to have an abortion, absolute in
the first trimester, albeit subject to some reason-
able state restrictions thereafter.

The reasoning was sound. The decision was
compassionate, humane and recognized advances
in science and societal norms. A new day had
finally arrived. No more accounts from friends
about midnight abortions, agonizing searches
for health care providers willing to perform them,
procedures done in back-alley basements or in
cars. Yes, cars.




opinion
The Torah is Unequivocally
Pro-life BY RABBI YAAKOV MENKEN
dem10 / E+
A great deal of misinformation has been shared
regarding abortion, much of it coming, of
course, in the wake of a leaked draft from the
Supreme Court suggesting it may soon overturn
Roe v. Wade.

But everything we have heard about supposed
wholesale bans, or lack of concern for the life of
the mother, pales in comparison to both the quan-
tity and severity of obviously wrong pronounce-
ments from those claiming a Jewish perspective.

One notable organization summed up a common
position by stating, “Judaism permits abortion.

Full stop.” Few things have been said about
Judaism by purported adherents that are more
clearly untrue.

The Jewish Bible’s position on life is unambigu-
ous — and emphatically “pro-life.” The Torah iden-
tifi es human life as a soul placed (breathed) within
a body by G-d Himself [Gen. 2:7]. Throughout his-
tory, Judaism has opposed murder, child sacrifi ce
and, with only modest exceptions, abortion. It is
due to the Torah’s infl uence that civilized Western
society does not accept infanticide as a method
of family planning, or regard throwing dissidents
to the lions as entertainment.

One who claims that fetal life is not precious
to Judaism must not have read the Torah or
Prophets, or studied our Oral Law. Rebecca is
told not only that she is carrying twins, but that
they have distinct natures and characters that
explain their behavior in utero [Gen. 25:23].

Jeremiah is told that “Before I placed you in the
womb I knew you, before you left the uterus I
sanctifi ed you, I appointed you a prophet to the
nations” [Jer. 1:5].

And in the Mishnah [Ohalos 7:6] we are taught
that the reason one must save a mother even at
the expense of her child is “because her life pre-
cedes his life.” Some fl agrantly misrepresent this
as saying that the fetus is not yet considered alive,
but the text itself explicitly says otherwise.

Jewish law also demands that the Sabbath be
violated in order to save a fetal life. Given that
lifesaving activity is the only situation in which
Sabbath restrictions are set aside, were a fetus
not considered alive this would be prohibited, not
required. Advocates must confront the truth: According to
Judaism, abortion, entailing a loss of human life, is
an unmitigated tragedy. Even the most permissive
opinions reserve abortion for extreme situations that
no woman should ever experience. The idea that
abortion should be regarded as simply a “choice,”
or a routine health care decision when the mother’s
health is not abnormally threatened by carrying the
child to term, is anathema to our beliefs.

This also, interestingly enough, coincides with
all that the medical community has learned about
fetal life since 1973. Today we know, for example,
that newborn babies respond not only to their
mothers’ heartbeats, but to the sound of their
parents’ voices. While in utero, babies suck their
thumbs for comfort, and even learn music. It is
simply nonsensical to argue that a thinking, listen-
ing baby is not alive.

Those Jews who ignore our ritual laws, eating
pork and treating Saturday like a normal day,
rarely insist that the relevant laws were misread
or misunderstood. They simply admit they do not
follow these laws. But recognizing the Torah’s
authority over moral judgments, those wishing
to behave in contravention of its ethical precepts
often devise tendentious readings to turn prohib-
ited acts into “Jewish values.”
Much as we can sympathize with the psycho-
logical need behind such eff orts, we cannot
minimize the inestimable value the Torah places
upon all human life, including that of those as yet
unborn. JE
Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the managing director of
the Coalition for Jewish Values.

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