[Avodah] Rav Moshe Feinstein on Abortion

[Micha Berger]

I don't know how many of you read the venues in which a discussion is
going on about whether halakhah is Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. (Basically,
it all started with Ben Shapiro confusing the dominant (AFAIK) halachic
position that abortion isn't murder with the conclusion that O is
"Pro-Life".

I think that even O Jews who feel they have to vote Pro-Life in order
to guarantee the possibility of abortion when halachically warranted
don't actually agree with Pro-Life ethics. IOW, not everything you think
should be legal do you think is actually moral. But getting back to
Torah...

As part of this contratempts in general media about what O Jews should
hold on abortion, I recently encountered this piece by Shlomo Brody
in the J-m Post
<https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Abortion-Pro-life-or-pro-choice-564557>.

Here's a nice opener, from the first paragraph: "I'll briefly explain
why the Orthodox position falls comfortably in the 'pro-life' camp yet
is more complex than other conservative positions."

   Jewish law grants moral status to a fetus. For this reason, we violate
   the Sabbath to save its life, even as we would not do the same to heal
   animals, which have a lower moral status. Most importantly, based on
   select verses in Genesis, the talmudic Sages conclude that as a general
   rule, feticide is prohibited under the seven Noahide laws for Jews and
   gentiles alike. As such, it remains prohibited to request or perform
   abortions not justified by Jewish law, with no distinction between the
   religion of the patient or doctor.
   ...
   While Jewish law may grant moral status to this future human being,
   this does not mean that it equates feticide with murder. If feticide is
   prohibited, but is not homicide, then what is it? Historically, many
   decisors viewed feticide as a lower-level form of manslaughter that is
   permitted only when it will save the mother's life. In that case alone,
   we treat the fetus as a rodef, a potential assailant, and assert that
   "the mother's blood is redder than that of the fetus," so to speak.
   This includes cases of direct physiological danger as well as mental
   imbalance to the point of becoming suicidal. Otherwise, abortion
   remains a very severe offense. This position was adopted in the 1960s
   and 1970s by, amongst others, British chief rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits,
   Israeli chief rabbi Isser Unterman, and America's most prominent
   rabbinic decisor, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.

   Yet other scholars like Rabbis Yaakov Emden and Benzion Uziel
   significantly lowered the severity of abortion, even as they firmly
   maintained its general prohibition...

Is this really R' Moshe's position? As I wrote, I thought he did consider
abortion actual murder, and not "a lower-level form of manslaughter". But
rather, like murder of someone who was terminally ill, it's simply not
punishable -- but just as bad as any othere murder. Can someone look at
IM CM 2:69 and tell me which one of us got it right? Or am I looking at
the wrong teshuvah?

R' Unterman does indeed label it *abuzraihu deretzichah" (Noam vol
4 1-11). I just don't think R Moshe agrees.

(With other sevaros being chavalah; an issur on the same spectrum as
shichvas zera, but more severe; or a bitul asei of pirya verivya.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
micha at aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter