comedownstairsandsayhello:

yidquotes:

To put it plainly, Jewish law allows for abortion. For the first 40 days of gestation, a fetus is considered “mere fluid” (Talmud Yevamot 69b), and the fetus is regarded as part of the mother for the duration of the pregnancy. It is not considered to have the status of personhood until birth; the Mishnah (Ohalot 7:6) teaches that if the mother’s life is in danger from the pregnancy, even in labor, the fetus may be sacrificed to save her life, unless the baby’s head has already emerged. Only then, according to Rashi (Talmud Sanhedrin 72b), is the fetus or baby considered to be a nefesh, a soul. Elsewhere, the Mishnah (Arachin 1:4) teaches that “If a [pregnant] woman is about to be executed, they do not wait for her until she gives birth. But if she had already sat on the birthstool, they wait for her until she gives birth.” Birth, not gestation, is the critical marker, here.

This body of literature, needless to say, comes in stark and striking contrast to arguments that life—and personhood—begins at conception.

Interestingly, many Christian communities derive their prooftexts against permitting abortion from the Hebrew Bible, like verses about God forming humans in the womb (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 44:24)—texts which don’t even register in the Jewish legal conversation on this topic. To put it simply, we don’t derive matters of Jewish law from Psalms. – Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

I’d like to point out too, since that thing about executing a pregnant woman sounds pretty brutal, that Jewish law places EXTREME limitations on the death penalty. The burden of proof is much higher than in many cases— you’d need 23 judges and two witnesses who could demonstrate that the defendant was explicitly warned that what they were doing was a capital offense, and proceeded anyway. If the verdict was too fast or was unanimous, it’d be taken as a sign of bias and they’d automatically acquit. The rabbis said that a court that executes more than one person in a generation would be considered a gang of murderers. Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon boasted that they if they had been on the court, being brilliant legal scholars, they could have found a way to acquit anyone.

tl;dr Judaism is really and truly pro-life in the sense of actually valuing life