[Avodah] childbirth

[Eli Turkel]

>
> If you are prepared to take that statement seriously (ie that Rachel Imanu
> was not overstating the case) then for all the risks of pregnancy and of
> sakanas nefashos, such risks will perforce need to be set against the
> pikuach nefesh situation which is created if a woman such as Rachel Imanu
> remains childless.
>
> If you accept this, then the difficulty in permitting a woman who feels like
> Rachel Imanu to getting pregnant, goes away, at least the first time.
>

> a) a similar calculation can be applied to subsequent children (does Rav
> Zilberstein hold similarly even in a case where the woman already has ten
> children who need her and who run the risk of being deprived of a mother if
> she shortens her life by having yet another?);
>

I am currently looking through several old teshuvot. In one R. Zilberstein
explicitly refers to Rachel Imenu as a source. He also brings that
depression is considered as pikuach nefesh. Hence, it should apply to
beyond the first child. Nevertheless I would guess (my opinion) that
for the 10th
child we would try very hard to talk the mother out of her decision.

Without discussing pikuach nefesh I am personally of women who went through
difficult fertility treatments for the 10th child


kol tuv

-- 
Eli Turkel