Jerusalem – As in previous years, Israeli Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar have come out with a letter in support of the controversial nonprofit, Efrat, an organization which works to prevent abortions.
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In their letter, the rabbis write in part, “We see great importance in the work of the Efrat association to save the lives of Jewish children; over its 30 years of activity, tens of thousands of fetuses were saved, and in the past year alone, the lives of 4,000 children were saved.”
This year, however, the rabbis deviated from the text of their usual support letter and went as far as calling for “making the wider public aware of the extreme seriousness involved in killing fetuses, which is like actual murder,” according to a report published in Ha’aretz (http://bit.ly/UljoCA).
Rabbis Metzger and Amar also directed the marriage departments of Israel’s religious councils to continue disseminating the Efrat-produced publication entitled “For a Happy Marriage” because of “its great importance and necessity.”
The rabbis typically issue their annual letter to coincide with Parshat Shemos, the Torah portion which details the murder of Jewish babies at the hands of the Egyptians.
It’s not enough to follow halacha, now they have to invent their own and traumatize women during a most vulnerable time?
The woman is traumatizing herself by killing her child, yes it’s her child and God and the soul have chosen that mother to raise the child. Therefore, who are we (yes I’m a female) to question gods choices or even that of a soul which is a higher being. As for causing a miscarriage, it’s not the same as abortion. Abortion is murder miscarriages can happen because of a fall and even more simpler things. As for what the Tora says, it says God considers a child a living creation from the moment of conceiving therefore abortion is murder.
Light is bestowed upon an infant with his or her naming. If a baby is not yet with the light of creation as they are not until they are named, it is not murder but rather a failure of pregnancy. If there is a need for an elective abortion especially in the terms of a mothers health, that is permissible by Torah. But really, we try to avoid the unnecessary demise of a fetus in almost every case. Torah does not permit unorthodox abortions for the means of preserving the womans lifestyle or culture.
Halacha says its mutilation of the body. So it’s allowed if the fetus will kill the mother etc
it’s not their bodies & they have no right to decide for others
From 40 days after conception Torah law says abortion is murder, but is punishable “b’dinei adam” but not “b’dinei shomaim”.
paskening on vin.so this is what our rabonim do in their spare time.
I’m not so knowledgeable, but I have a couple of questions for those VIN readers who are:
1) Is it allowed to murder someone to save your own life?
2) Is it allowed for a woman to have a baby knowing it would kill her?
BTW – this story seems a bit short – I would guess that the actual statement contains more details and subtleties than the simple “its murder”.
First of all I don’t like the statement of Efrat being called controversial. Second just some facts between 48 and 88 there were over 1 million abortion in Eretz Yisrael. If you carry forward to now another 22 years probably the numbers are between 2.5 million and 3 million abortions. Add the fact that by now many would have been married and had children of their own and even grandchildren by now.
Safe to say it would be another 5 million Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael They would have not brought the anti-semitic Russia goyim [totally not Jewish by any
dereck] We would not be having problem in occupying the land either. Now for the people who are always anti charedi are they fulling Eretz Yisrael with Jewish
Nesamas
I am not weighing in either way – but I must say that a woman raising a child she doesn’t want and sometimes out of wedlock (or worse) – that isn’t such a great situation either.