My father tells me that he has quite a few Jewish friends in their 60s and 70s who tell him that they would vote for McCain over Obama but for the issue of abortion rights. This is a bit odd; obviously, few people in their 60s and 70s are concerned that they will have direct need for an abortion; the friends in question live in New York, which had legal abortion even before Roe v. Wade, and will continue to have it regardless of whether the Supreme Court further backtracks on Roe.
My father's experience is consistent with polling I've seen, and with my own anecdotal experiences. The polls show that some absurdly high percentage of Jews believe in strong abortion rights. And my anecdotal experience suggests that many Jews do consider opposition to abortion rights a dealbreaker for political candidates, elevating it about other considerations.
This is certainly not a question of Jewish tradition. Jewish law is not nearly as hostile to abortion as, say, Catholicism, but it is not exactly encouraged, either.
So why are Jews--even elderly Jews who live in states where abortion is protected by the political process--so concerned with the issue?
My guess is that they see abortion rights as a heuristic for "a (politically) secular society." They know that most political opposition to abortion rights comes from (Christian) religious sources, and so they associate such opposition with a mixing of religion and state, something that most American Jews are very much against.
Not exactly encouraged, indeed...
Socialism Is The State As Church
The strange part is why these old New York Jews feel so strongly about it, presumably more than similar demographics and more strongly than they feel about other issues you'd think they'd find more important.
Are you actually unfamiliar with modern liberalism, which holds that government interventions in the economy for the purposes of creating a social safety net and redistributing income are good, but that government intervention in non-economic social life is bad, or are you just being deliberately obtuse?
but their granddaughters might. My "guess" (ie, something i've just made up without a shred of evidence) is that family is sufficiently important to elder Jews that they vote their family values -- ie, reproductive freedom for their grandkids.
My own experience is that, with many of these Jews only slightly removed from the Eastern European mileau, they are more comfortable with socialist-leaning policies.
I'm fairly certain that, were the Supreme Court overrule Roe, a Republican-controlled Congress would immediately criminalize abortion nationwide.
That said, I think Prof. Bernstein's analysis is right: nearly all pro-life political candidates seem to be religiously motivated. Suspicion of candidates who base their legislative agenda on establishing their religious beliefs is important to religious minorities.
In particular, I'd guess that most of these Jewish men are not very religious (in the Jewish sense). I'd be surprised if a significant number of them avoided writing on Tuesday. Whether they are for or against abortion in certain circumstances is probably not entirely based on Jewish though, and is almost certainly not a religious point for them.
Similarly, a disproportionate number of blacks are criminals.
Right thinking people recognize that there are plenty of exceptions -- i.e. most blacks are not criminals and most Jews are not bankers -- and therefore don't let the malfeasance of so many in these respective races determine their attitudes towards the race as a whole. Nevertheless, it's impossible to sugarcoat the truth in the stereotypes.
Seems rather ugly and barbaric by modern legal standards. This also seems to be straight forward as to what the Fundamentalist Christian point of view should be, seeing as it's just one chapter past the Ten Commandments, and I'm aware of no New Testament text which overrides it. Is this the Biblical Law, or is it not? Is this a faithful transliteration of the Talmud?
While, ironically, Christian rightists pride themselves on being second to none in their support of Israel and Jewish causes (even if their own "final solution" is apparently conversion or death, in the service of bringing about Armageddon).
Meanwhile America's secular elites greeted Jews through much of the 20th Century with scorn and segregation. Right-leaning persons would probably embrace such seemingly church-state blends as Kiryas Joel. Why would these older Jews not embrace the Christian right?
And if not, why pick abortion- whatever its merit, hardly an essential element of Jewish faith, and if anything anathema to a small religion always concerned with its own numbers dwindling- as a dealbreaking political issue?
Despite the Republican talking points that paint Democrats as identical to Socialists, American Jews (who know from Socialism) realize that real socialists are crazy zealots, real Republicans are crazy zealots (for a different zealotry) and Democrats are the sane moderates in the middle, who neither want to "Nationalize" or "De-Regulate" on first principles, but want to see which is the correct choice given the facts.
In this particular example, "Criminalizing Abortion" by Republicans is one extreme, with "Mandatory Family Planning" to other extreme for the Commies. Those who are familiar with the odiousness of one should be sensitive to the odiousness of the other.
The same applies to the "American Welfare State with substantial governmental regulation" as the happy medium between pure central planning and pure laissez-faire, and not the first step on a slippery slope to one or the other.
Is it so taboo to state that people who like abortion, actually, in fact, like abortion, and aren't supporting it for some other reason?
My smart-aleck reason is that Jews think they're having too many children. Or they don't feel they have the right to deny Hitler a posthumous victory, as Emil Fackenheim would have said.
That's only half the verse, and there are issues with the translation:
An easier to read (and more relevant in particular places) translation would be this: If men fight and hurt a woman with child and the child comes out but there is no tragedy he shall surely be punished as the husband of the woman (literally master) assesses upon him and he shall pay by order of the judges (23) but if there is a tragedy he shall give life for life (24) an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot (25) a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.
The key phrase here is "and the child comes out and there is no tragedy", with the key word being "tragedy" (ason in hebrew). The Jewish reading reading here is that "the child comes out" (that is, there is a miscarriage), but there is no other tragedy/disaster/mischief (that is, she does not die), then the culprit pays a fine, but if there is a tragedy/disaster/mischief (that is, the woman dies or is injured), then the culprit suffers the punishment.
This is in contrast to the typical Christian reading (which may be due to issues raised in translating into Greek and then English, I'm not sure). In that case, the key phrase is read as "the child comes out" (that is, the child comes out just fine), then the culprit should pay a fine, but if there is tragedy/disaster/mischief (that is, if there is a miscarriage, or the baby is deformed in some fashion), then the culprit suffers the punishment.
As you can see, the former reading (the traditional Jewish one) does, as you suggested, see the baby as a non-lawful person (the law deals with the mother, who is seen as special in some way for being pregnant). You can read the fetus as being chattel, though note that the presumption in the Bible is that the husband is responsible for supporting the wife and controls all the finances, so it is no more chattel than the wife is (that's a debate for another time). The latter reading (the fundamentalist Christian reading) sees the fetus as the focal point for the phrase "v'lo yihye ason" (and there will be no mischief), which in turn means that the fetus does have human status.
That's probably an oversimplification, seeing as Rambam, at least, has a distinct view of the first 40 days after conception (which is, of course, the basis for the OU's support for embryonic stem cell research).
What? Where? How? Who? This is shocking -- does someone actually claim that Armageddon will come if Christians kill or convert enough Jews? It appears to me that this is what you're claiming!
This is disgusting -- I hope you're fabricating this.
If Roe were to be overturned, it would be based on an argument that it was decided wrongly (and it was) and that the issue was not one of Federal jurisdiction (and it isn't) I don't think a law outlawing it would be anymore sucessful than the ones that are passed now.
Unlikely. The rationale would be that the Constitution does not speak to the subject. Because Congress has a general police power under the post-Raich Commerce Clause, it could make abortion a federal crime if it so chose. With an Obama victory and expanded Democratic margins in both houses of Congress in the offing, this scenario isn't likely to come to pass in the foreseeable future.
Lior - you are "fairly certain...a Republican-controlled Congress would immediately criminalize abortion nationwide." Any evidence of that you'd like to place on the table?
It is fascinating but not easy for an outsider to comprehend.
Nor, it seems for an insider?
This is disgusting -- I hope you're fabricating this.
There are some Christians who believe this, but I'd bet the number of people who think this belief is common is bigger than the number of people who actually believe it.
Yeah, because the first 200 years or so of American history where abortion was illegal was just one gigantic theocracy.
Or, the simplest answer is the correct one: they like abortion, they don't want their kids "punished" with a baby.
I ask again: is it so hard to admit that people who SUPPORT abortion, do, in fact, support it?
DangerMouse, there are some of us who believe abortion is a moral atrocity but should still be legal. Law and morality seldom have much to do with each other.
Absurd: adj.
1. Something David Bernstein disapproves of.
2. Something David Bernstein disagrees with.
Also, the most extreme anti-abortion position, that abortion includes anything that might conceivably (pun intended) interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg, would outlaw manu forms of contraception. People who are in their 60s or 70s recall when contraception was illegal (albeit only in benighted places like Connecticut), and are not eager to return to those days.
You have cited from the New King James Version, which is substantially different from both the King James Version, and the 21st Century King James Version.
I think Professor Bernstein's explanation makes sense, particularly if one considers the prominent role that Jewish attorneys played in winning the activist, aggressively secular Supreme Court decisions of the middle and latter part of the 20th century. Row is a pretty doggone good proxy for politicians and people who want to control your life for religious reasons, and for voters who would attack those secular decisions.
I would also take DangerMouse's remark seriously - they may just really support it for what it is. However, then we are still left with Sasha's question of why do they support this particular issue so strongly.
This is one of the main reasons why the Anti-Defamation League is a big supporter of gay marriage and is fanatically pro-Darwinist. The ADL filed a pro-gay marriage amicus brief in the California Supreme Court case that overturned the prohibition of gay marriage and is fanatically opposed to the teaching or even mention of criticism of Darwinism in the public schools. The ADL bitterly denounced two documentaries -- the "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV program from Coral Ridge Ministries and the "Expelled" movie by Ben Stein (who BTW is Jewish) -- that link Darwinism to Nazism; the ADL said that Hitler did not "need" Darwin. The ADL's support for gay marriage might be explained as bending over backwards to support another group that has suffered discrimination and persecution, but how can the ADL's fanatical pro-Darwinism be justified, considering that many Jews -- particularly orthodox Jews -- support creationism and/or Intelligent Design? Also, the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel are violently homophobic. Some Jews -- such as the ADL's Jews -- just blindly view some issues as solely or mainly proxies for the church-state separation issue.
I discuss these issues on my blog in articles in two "Darwin-to-Hitler" post-label groups: here and here. The reason for the two groups is that I am limited to a maximum of 20 articles per group. Some of the articles do not concern the Darwin-to-Hitler issue, but I wanted to keep down the number of different post labels.
You are right, they could only make it a crime to travel across state lines to procure an abortion or to transport the any instrumentality of abortion across state lines. Oh, and probably make it illegal to use an interstate telecommunication system for the purposes of facilitating an abortion.
If christian influence in Republican party is the issue now, would the growing black and muslim influence in the Democrat party (hypothetically) become an issue for the jews?
Are you incapable of accepting that someone might disagree with you? Is it really beyond reason to believe differently? I mean, for my part, I am pro choice but I can at least understand and acknowledge the many truths inherent in the pro-life position (as usual, this controversy is not true versus falsity but one truth weighed against another).
At any rate, it must be very hard to find a shul then, since about 2/3rds are members of the RCRC.
Should a woman who has an abortion be charged with murder?
I really just don't get this when it comes to abortion. I get it generally. It is perfectly reasonable to think, say, homosexual sex or masturbation or whatever is a moral atrocity but should still be legal -- do you really want the government policing this sort of thing even if you do think they are immoral. But this doesn't carry over to abortion.
That is, if you think abortion is a moral atrocity, exactly why do you think its a moral atrocity? I can't think of any reason other than you believe that which is being aborted is a human being. (Unless you also think liposuction is also a moral atrocity). But if you think that which is being aborted is a human being, then you have to answer why this particular class of human beings shouldn't be protected by the state from those wishing to kill them.
Abortion simply doesn't neatly fall into the "I disapprove, but don't want it to be illegal" framework.
Even the orthodox acknowledge the basic truth of Darwinian evolution concurrent with the story of Gensis, which is allegorical.
Judaism has a long tradition of not taking the holy texts hyper-literally. See here, e.g. (note that Chabad cannot be accused of being in the liberal wing of Judiasm so this isn't some revisionist thing that happened recently, this is old hat).
Theocracy, no. But predominantly and aggressively Protestant Christian, yes. Please familiarize yourself with American history.
So much for your tribalism argument.
I consider abortion to be immoral because it is akin to self-mutilation, a grave sin. This, of course, assumes that a fetus is not an independent human being but is part and parcel of the pregnant woman's body (i.e. the position of Rashi when he wrote "ubar yerech imo" -- lit. the fetus is as the thigh of his mother).
Self-mutilation is still wrong, of course, but it is not for the government to shut down the tattoo parlors and piercing shops (at least not in any pluralistic society).
Fixed it for you. Having a child can be a blessing. Having a child when you are 16 is a curse on both the mother and the child. We would, of course, prefer that no one get pregnant until they decide they intend to have a child but life is not so simple.
When my father worked in high-risk obstetrics (he's retired now), he saw numerous cases of girls (not women!) in their young teens (iirc, one was like 13) that decided to keep their pregnancies. He said he hoped to God that the mother's parents or some other family member would be able to take proper care of the child. It is the awesome responsibility of raising a child that counsels waiting until the time is right.
That does not hold up, however, when reading Rambam: Rambam treats the fetus under Din Rodef if it is threatening the mother's life: presumably, if the fetus was part of the woman's body, Din Rodef wouldn't need to be invoked, since you could simply cut off the offending body part. To give credit where credit is due, I heard that take on Rambam courtesy of R' Shlomo Riskin.
Like I said, the more liberal you are, the more you support abortion. Obama is so radically liberal and supports abortion so much that he's in favor of infanticide.
Liberalism is ultimately a philosophy of death. Liberals tear down anyone with ability through class envy. They tear down the family by training women in woman's studies to hate men, and by training men to fear women lest they be arrested for spousal "abuse." They engender racial conflict with people like Wright. They want society to move backwards technologically, to satisfy their worship of the earth. They want to destroy all traditional moral codes and religion, to be replaced with worship of self. They want to promote a barren deviancy like homosexuality as equivalent to civilization-sustaining marriage.
Given all of that, murdering some unborn (or just born) children is a walk in the park.
Aside from the simple fact that abortion is child murder, aborting a child seriously destroys many women and leaves them demented psychologically. To this day, I know acquaintances of mine who have had abortions and cannot get it together because of it. They continue to treat sex as a game and children as parasites. They wonder why men look at them as sex objects and not as potential mothers. And when they're 40 and hoarding cats, they'll still be deluded enough to think that the abortion "saved them." Idiots.
But you must think abortion is immoral, but not that immoral -- certainly not a moral atrocity. In fact, you probably would have used the term moral atrocity like NI if you had thought it appropriate.
But NI stated that he or she thought abortion was a "moral atrocity." That term is usually reserved for crimes which have victims. So my basic puzzlement remains and I basically agree with the thrust, if not the tone, of DangerMouse's argument: those who want abortion to be legal really don't have that much against it.
Last I recall, it was conservatives that were attacking the fundamental notions of biology and physics because they are incompatible with their hyper-literal interpretations of the holy texts.
That is, it advocates that science, rather than religion, should be taught in science classes? Yes, that's how much Jews feel, as much because the pursuit of knowledge is in itself good as because of the brand of religion that would obviously replace it.
Why do you think it's a moral atrocity? Not that it's immoral, but an ATROCITY? That's pretty bad. What is it about abortion that makes you think it's so nefarious?
Go ahead, just say it. Don't pretend it's something stupid like self-mutilation.
Not all liberals are gaia-worshipers. But those that are, definitely want things to move back into the stone age. They view mankind as a disease on the planet, which is consistent with the idea that liberalism is a philosophy of death. At least, death for humanity and civilization.
You are so blinded by your personal views that you have failed to grasp the argument. My I fairly guess that your vote depends significantly on the "murder of unborn babies"? Well, these Jews do not consider abortion such an important issue in either direction. However, many (most) voters and politicians who share your position are (a) motivated by religious considerations and (b) also support other policies, including mandatory prayer in the schools and a greater Christian character to public life.
While these Jews are voting against the latter policies, they are taking the "rationally ignorant" lazy step of identify whether politicians support or oppose their preferred policies by a simple, highly visible proxy: the politician's "pro-life/choice" standing. They aren't voting for killing babies any more than you'd vote to have Jewish kids pray to the Christian god or be kicked off the football team. But there is a high correlation between opinions on both issues.
Sorry for the tone. But the argument is solid. In fact, the idea that abortion is a sad, sad thing to liberals is a crock of B.S. They love it. They freaking love it. It allows them to engage in all the sex they want with no consequences. Men love it because they get to screw around with loose women. And women love it because they get to screw around like men with no consequences. All the while, of course, they're degrading themselves and building up a fast history that would make any decent person go running to the hills once learning of such a past. They become corrupted psychologically yet remain convinced that they're living a liberated life on the margins. It's all so chic to them.
Come ON. I'm not the only one who lives on the Upper West Side. You've seen your neighbors, you've been out. Don't pretend it's a sad event. It sure as hell isn't. They love abortion.
Yes, they are for killing babies. They DO NOT WANT KIDS, because KIDS END THE PARTY. "Breeders" once was a derogatory term of art used by gay people. Now it's been adopted by a certain class of liberal. Every yuppie from 16-35 is a GIGANTIC supporter of abortion precisely because they want to live fast and young and don't want the party to stop. The older people who remain fanatical about abortion just don't want their up and coming kids "punished" with a baby. Young girls have careers to conquer and men to romance. Young men also have careers to conquer and can't settle down early. Abortion is their savior. It's the liberal sacrament. They love it.
I don't think it's right to read Raich as giving the feds a general police power though. The correct reading of Raich is that Scalia hates druggies (which also explains the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case).
If the Attorney General of the United States is competent to judge whether drugs have medicinal uses or not, surely he is also competent to judge if medical procedures have medicinal uses or not?
While in law school, I heard an (orthodox) rabbi speak on the issue of abortion politics.
He said that as a rabbi, he believed that abortion was generally prohibited, but that he was also strongly pro-choice from a US political perspective.
The reason why was quite simple: Under orthodox Jewish law, a woman is prohibited from having an abortion generally, but she is required to have an abortion if the fetus would endanger her. It's a binary decision and there's no "choice" involved.
However, orthodox rabbis may reasonably differ regarding where to draw the line between one or the other. Some may limit abortion to those cases in which the woman is in actual physical danger of losing her life. Other rabbis may consider her mental health. In any of these cases, the final decision on whether or not to have an abortion was a very private and very personalized decision between a woman and her trusted religious authority.
Because of how the Jewish legal system worked, this rabbi felt strongly about voting pro-choice because he NEVER wanted the US legal system to put him in a position where he had to counsel somebody that Jewish law required a woman to get an abortion but that US law prohibited her from doing so.
This is a very interesting observation. I'm sure it goes the same way on the other side as well. Its facinating how we've decided to play out our culture war on a single issue that stands as a proxy for many others.
"Remember the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003?"
You mean the National "Federalist" Hypocracy Act of 2003? I was always skeptical of the "return it to the states" arguements given federal decision making on a wide variety of issues (e.g. drugs, drinking age, etc.), but after they passed quite literally a federal ban on (some) abortions, how can anyone still argue that they would not ban more given a more favorable supreme court?
Thanks, though, for sharing with us your perspective as a "right thinking" antisemite. (Have you and Larry Fafarman hooked up?)
OK, then why "absurdly"?
Or maybe they feel the same way about blacks that the nazis did?
Oh, I didn't just go there, did I?
Hint: when you need to demonize your opponents to that degree in order to support your views, you've probably missed something significant.
I would much prefer to understand the concerns of the pro-choice (not pro-abortion) movement and address them within a life-affirming framework, rather than attack them as morally vacuous socialists.
Could we please work with these people and tone down the vitriol? We'll get a lot further. Making abortion illegal does us no good if people don't understand why it's wrong, and why a pro-life society is a good thing.
Finally, stuff like this:
does not have the desired effect, unless your intent is to make otherwise chaste women run around in the streets screaming, "Someone please f-ck me now!"
/pro-life feminist rant
Who's demonizing? Communism is a philosophy of death too. But many Communists are deluded into thinking that they're doing something good. Same thing with liberals. Many of them think they're doing good. It's the few and far between, like Saul Alinsky, who understand what liberalism is and readily practice it.
I think the "absurdly" was a comparison to the rest of the U.S. population (which is split about 50/50 on abortion issues), not the position itself.
You went here, there, and all over the map. If you want to protect the feti, you might consider a Dale Carnegie course or something.
LM,
"Kevin Youkilis is Jewish, which means that my father, may he rest in peace, wherever he is right now is rooting for the Red Sox. As is his father, and his father...."
Yeah, but he went to high school down the street from me, and my grandfather's cousin fought for the Nazis (survived Stalingrad, no less), so he doesn't really count. Plus, you know, the goatee.
I think the relevant tribes of which I was speaking were New Yorker (hence the busting on Theo) and Democrat, but maybe I took a wrong linguistic turn somewhere...
I'm fine with trying to be polite to people who aren't hedonistic advocates of this thing. But we're about to elect the Infanticide Candidate to President, so you'll have to excuse me if I think that the hedonistic advocates are growing in numbers.
Anyway, the best way to reach that subset of pro-choice people is to hammer that what they ultimately and unwittingly support is murder. Because it really is. Libertarians aren't supposed to be in favor of murder, and I'm sure that people would rather support a pregnant woman with other options than to assist her in a modern day child sacrifice to Moloch.
Making abortion illegal does us no good if people don't understand why it's wrong, and why a pro-life society is a good thing.
Abortion won't be made illegal until the people despise it for the murder that it is. It's really either that, or society continues to discard people it finds useless and who get in the way of what people want. You can soon add the old and the infirm to that list, along with helpless babies.
Back during the age of Usenet Newsgroups, there was something called a KILLFILE, which you could use so that you'd never see a particular individual's comments ever again.
Unfortunately, that function doesn't exist on blogs these days.
It's rather obvious that DangerMouse is a total nut and/or a troll. Why anybody would waste their time arguing with him/her/it is beyond me.
To those responding to DangerMouse: Do you think that there is a chance in a million that you'll actually convince DangerMouse that he/he/it is wrong? Stop baiting the troll and it will go away.
Abortion is a cheap and voluntary means for ensuring that the least fit members of society (coincidentally, those too poor to support children) don't pollute their world with their substandard genes.
I think we should follow India's lead and offer refundable tax credits (of some suitable amount) for anyone under the age of 30 that volunteers to get sterilized.
The women's movement got - at best - a partial victory with abortion and contraception. It gave us a society in which women can be like men, and pursue the same opportunities as do men, without having children being used as a bludgeon to keep them in the home. In short, women and men could be equal, so long as women can avoid pregnancy (contraception) or are only pregnant for a short period of time (via abortion).
What it has not done is to give us a society in which pregnant persons have the same opportunities as non-pregnant persons. We've merely exchanged a problem that faces most women to that which faces only a subset of women. That is where the pro-life movement has work to do - because, even if abortion is seen as an abomination, the lack of abortion will place a disproportionate burden on certain groups of people.
There are still laws on the books in some states that require women to get the approval of her rapist before giving up the child of that rape for adoption. Now, any sane person will look at this situation and realise that a pro-life law will only make this worse, not better. But that involves being more than merely "polite" to pro-choice advocates; it involves understanding their motivations, and that their views are valid, passionate, and, given the society in which we live, moral.
So take your politeness, place it elsewhere, and cut the crap... unless you're a pro-choice shill in disguise.
Sorry you feel that way. I've tried to avoid personal attacks here. But I won't be respectful to disrespectful ideas, and liberalism and specifically support for abortion is contemptuous. And I'll answer your question for you: there's no chance in hell you'll convince me that abortion isn't murder. I'm willing to listen to idea on how to get other people to understand that.
neurodoc, I think that the cite you are looking for is here.
(removes tongue from cheek)
What it has not done is to give us a society in which pregnant persons have the same opportunities as non-pregnant persons. We've merely exchanged a problem that faces most women to that which faces only a subset of women.
I see.
Respectfully, you view children as a punishment to some degree. You think children are obstacles to a woman's career, at least in today's environment.
I'm fine with making it easier for pregnant women to continue their careers after having kids. But I think you're making a serious mistake with your assumptions. Children are not punishments. They are people. There is no career on earth that is worth committing murder for.
A girl I knew once told me that she got pregnant while at Harvard and "had" to have the abortion because it would've "ruined her career." She's a mid-level lawyer at a BIGLAW firm here in NYC. Needless to say, the abortion did more to damage her than anything else. She'd have been better off if she had the kid, put it up for adoption, or had her large, wealthy family help raise it. Now she's psychologically incapable of forming lasting relationships. She's also become ruthless and bitter. A person willing to destroy an innocent helpless life in a quest for status and power certainly can't keep their cruel ambition in check afterwards. Yes, she was sad about the abortion when she told me about it at first. But she was unapologetic. She would do it again, if she had the chance. Because nothing was more important to her than her career.
Well, there are things that are more important. So I don't think abortion is a partial victory at all. It has done more damage to women than anything else in society. And that career has ruined that girl's life. The baby would've saved it. Abortion has destroyed good girls, tempting them into a a life of viciousness for a quick end to a problem. They might rid themselves of a growing baby, but they replace it with a growing bitterness and callousness at the rest of the world.
There is something seriously perverse about a feminism that doesn't appreciate the femininity of motherhood.
As one of the people who often rags on David for his politically partisan posts, I must say this is a superb and thoughtful analysis. Most Jews I know who are not ultra-orthodox have a very secular political bent. It is they who are most repelled by the Christian Coalition/Evangelical Right wing of the Republicans, regardless of their political principles.
Honestly, as a minority religion often persecuted by dominant religious majorities, I think they're right. With the exception of the Nazis (and Nazi ideology served very well as a replacement for religion in many other ways), every assault on Jewish identity, from Nebuchadnezzar to Trajan to the Blood Libel, stemmed from the blending of religion and state. 3000 years of Jewish history cry out to oppose such blending.
And after that, at night, the ice weasels come.
Let me be clear: I do not view children as punishments. I'm re-reading what I wrote, and I can't see a damn thing that indicates that I would think that.
You said:
One does not follow necessarily and logically from the other, in either direction.
I do not live in a la-la land in which being pregnant and having a baby does absolutely nothing to one's life. I don't live in your world, in which problems aren't problems. Having children is physically, psychologically, emotionally, and financially difficult, for women more so than men. This should not be news. It is from that reality that the pro-choice movement springs, not from an animus towards children or a pejorative view of them as "punishments."
There is a difference between being pro-life and anti-choice. Those of us in the former category believe in giving women choices - every option humanely possible, save abortion. That involves caring about women as well as their unborn children, which seems to be a problem with the anti-choice crew.
You don't know what in the hell you are talking about, you ignoramus. For example, a news article said,
Now you want me to believe that these yeshiva students who haven't studied any science at all in years are going to accept a scientific idea that conflicts with the bible? You're crazy.
My blog has numerous examples of orthodox Jews showing extreme hostility to evolution theory -- see articles in the following post-label groups on my blog: here and here. The reason for the two groups is that I am limited to a maximum of 20 articles per group. The post labels are "Darwin-to-Hitler," but some of the articles do not concern the Darwin-to-Hitler issue because I wanted to keep down the number of different post labels.
Anyway, what in the hell does the evolution controversy have to do with anti-Semitism? Why should an organization devoted mainly to fighting anti-Semitism -- the Anti-Defamation League -- concern itself with the evolution controversy?
Really? I can't imagine why a man would fear being arrested for spousal abuse unless he, you know, hit his wife. Would you really characterize putting some fear into such a guy as a uniquely liberal agenda?
Most of the commenters here seem motivated in their anti-abortion positions by perfectly defensible views about personhood. If that's where you're coming from, DangerMouse, fine. We can understand and respect your position even if we don't agree (although many here clearly do).
But that doesn't seem to be where you're really coming from. Instead, you make comments like the above, and those about "loose women" who "degrade themselves" by having sex (and, apparently, the moniker applies regardless of whether the sex leads to abortions). To you, it seems, abortion is a symptom of a culture in which sex isn't degrading and dirty, women who enjoy sex aren't whores, and men aren't free to treat women as chattel.
Many of use who fear politicians with strong anti-abortion agendas really fear what's driving those agendas. I, for one, have no great love for abortion (though my views on personhood and autonomy don't lead me to condemn it). I do, however, have a fondness for sex, think women who like it are okay too, and have no desire whatsoever to hit my wife. People like DangerMouse have made abortion rights into a proxy for all of these other cultural issues.
I do think Bernstein's question is an interesting one, but I probably haven't done much to answer it. Resistance to puritanism doesn't seem to be a uniquely Jewish instinct. (Just to be clear, I am not branding all abortion opponents as puritans or misogynists -- only the strain embodied by DM's comments.)
A reasonable response to Obama would be that he is addressing a straw-man argument against abortion. He is saying he does not agree with those who believe abortion is wrong because it lets women off the hook for irresponsible decisions. It would be quite fair to say, "but our concern is not enforcing personal responsibility, it's protecting human life." It is not at all fair, and does not contribute to the debate, to characterize this quotation as a sign that Obama hates children.
To make the implicit explicit, let me say that I do think abortion should be legal; even ignoring the more essential arguments, it will happen whether legal or not. A Jewish saying can be roughly translated as: "one does not make an ordnance that the public will not be able to keep".
That said, I am also a strong opponent of Roe v. Wade. General police power was clearly not delegated to the Federal Government. Moreover, to the extent that the Constitution protected unenumerated individual rights against the States, abortion clearly was not one of these rights.
Today, both the Republicans and the Democrats agree with the central holding of Roe v. Wade and its later corollaries: that there are Federal powers regarding abortion. They only disagree on the way the power should be wielded. The Democrats believe in a Constitutional right to abortion, to be vindicated by the Supreme Court and enforced by the Executive; the Republicans in a Constitutional power to ban it, to be legislated by Congress and enforced by the Executive. In private conversations, I have found both sides to mostly make "ends justify the means" arguments regarding this: abortions/abortion bans are so evil that any level of government doing anything about them is ok as long as the action points in the right direction, Constitutional issues be damned. Certainly some of my left-wing friends could not accept that I genuinely support legal abortion when I disagree with the Federal Government forcing the states to legalize it.
That way, no one's speech/viewpoint gets banned, but those who speak in order to throw a monkey-wrench into an otherwise civil discussion do not get to assert that power so strongly.
See, e.g., Cory Doctorow, How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community
Unlike Larry, I do think a student of a rigorous Yeshiva, while lacking in basic science and mathematics, would have little trouble grasping the essential ideas of Evolution, and understand the evidence for it. However, this shouldn't mislead you: the student will nevertheless conclude he can ignore these ideas -- they are evidently incompatible with the creation story, hence surely wrong as applied to the real world.
Removing non-viable fetuses before their inevitable death in the womb is hardly infanticide. Making a woman stay pregnant till the inevitable stillbirth seems a "moral atrocity" to me.
If my deadpan obscured that I was agreeing with you, mea culpa.
What do you mean, "unlike Larry"? I never said that the yeshiva students can't understand evolution theory -- I only said, like you said, that they would not accept it because it is against their religion. And I don't understand why ultra-orthodox Jews have not given the Anti-Defamation League hell for its fanatical opposition to criticism of evolution. In one case, an orthodox rabbi did apologize for ADL national director Abraham Foxman's vicious condemnation of the Darwin-to-Hitler theme of the Coral Ridge Ministries' "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV program. Jews who attack Christian fundies are biting the hand that feeds them. Christian fundies are the biggest non-Jewish friends of Jews and Israel. It is the Christian fundies who have made the Republican Party strongly pro-Israel. See this article and this article.
There are indeed many otherwise intelligent Orthodox Jews who do not believe in eveloution. This is a relatively recent phenomenon and seems to stem from an unwillingness to allow Christians to have a stricter interpretation. There is not a long tradition of insisting on a literal interpretation; indeed, the contrasts between the first two chapters of Genesis would seem to exclude taking both of them literally.
A great many people who are morally opposed to abortion believe it should be legal nonetheless. Because we recognize that the consequence of a ban is not the absense of abortion, but desparate girls risking their lives with coat hangars.
The status of a fetus in Jewish law is somewhat ambiguous. Abortion is called bloodshed in the Talmud (Sanhedrin page 50 some odd) on the other hand, the Mishnah in Ohelot is quite clear that we do not delay the execution of a pregnant woman who has been convicted of a capital crime to spare the innocent fetus. The rules governing a live fetus removed from the uterus of a cow that has been slaughtered for food also suggest that the fetus is not considered an independent life.
So, in 50 years, there will be no pro-abortion elderly Jews. All the elderly Jews will be pro-life Orthodox.
A friend was happily pregnant with her second child when an ultrasound showed numerous broken bones. The baby had some kind of condition that made his bones fragile. His own movements were making his bones break. My friend's doctor told her &her husband that there was no way their baby would survive birth, not even a c-section. They believed that the injuries caused their baby pain. She worried that any jarring movements on her part also caused pain (I don't know if that is true). This situation upset them greatly, and of course their 2yo was not immune to their distress.
They knew, of course, that there were options--she could spend months at a hospice that cares for pregnant women whose babies are doomed, knowing that her baby was suffering for the entirety of its short life, or she could have an abortion to end their baby's suffering sooner, knowing that they had deliberately ended his life.
I gather that some people could instantly and confidently decide which option would be the "moral atrocity." Not me. And I don't trust the government to make such decisions for all of us.
If that is so, why does New York's Penal Law still make abortion punishable? Take a look at N.Y.Penal Law sections 125.40; 125.45, 125.50 &125.55, all enacted in 1971?
It is impossible to understand the Jewish meaning of the Pentateuch from the text (even the Hebrew text, let alone an English translation) without reference to the Oral Law -- the Talmud, Midrash and other rabbinic sources. As one example, the text you cite refers to the law for Jews only. Abortion for the descendants of Noah (i.e. non-Jews) are governed by Gen. 9:6. (I realize Jews are also descended from Noah, but the Jewish religion teaches that the Jews received special laws at Sinai that apply only to Jews -- including the verse you cited.) "He that sheds the blood of a man that is in a man, by man shall his blood be shed." The Sages derive from the apparent redundancy (blood of a man THAT IS IN A MAN) that the verse refers to performing an abortion. See Rashi to Gen. 9:6.
Josh L.
Chattels are alienable. Wives and children, in Jewish law are not. And yes, there is the issue of the Hebrew maidservant, but as you know, that is more akin to transacting a betrothal.
You'll have to back that assertion with a number or two. The numbers I've seen suggest that less than 1/3 of the 1.5M or so Orthodox Jews (or about 3% of the 15M total Jews worldwide) are within the Haredi divisions.
Of the Haredi, I don't know how many reject evolution, but is it fair to say that something less than 3% s "many"?
"If my deadpan obscured that I was agreeing with you, mea culpa."
Nea culpa. I'm still recovering from the gaze of the JukeBoxMedusa, so deadpans may still be beyond my powers of discernment.
That is true. I should have made clear that I was referring to most of Orthodox Judaism, not the ultra-Orthodox. The official position of the RCA (which is the foremost Orthodox organization here in the States) is
There are, of course, some Jews that reject evolution but by a huge margin (we're talking >85% here), most Jews believe in evolution concurrent with Genesis.
Or supporting every Goddamn gun control scheme in existence!!
"There are some Christians who believe this"
Granted that there are some Christians who believe in UFOs or a mandatory gold standard and so on... What I'm asking is how they tie that to Christianity. I don't get it; none of the apocalyptic texts tie the deaths of Jews to Armageddon. It seems like a belief that's totally unrelated to their religion proper.
I don't think it's wrong for me to pressure you on this tangential issue; you made a pretty horrific claim.
Or is this merely a belief that the Jews hold about the Christian "rightists"? If that's the case, I can understand why you'd bring it up in this context, although I don't see why you'd state it that way (your statement makes it look like Christian support for Israel runs hand-in-hand with the desire to kill Jews in order to bring about Armageddon).
-Wm
Huh? Jews have a "better-than-average reason" to fear that result? Are you saying that Jews have actually observed instances where even slight increases in the level of restrictions on abortion have led to theocracy? And when did that happen?
Since a fetus is not a man, abortion does not meet the predicate of Gen 9:6 because no blood of a man has been spilt.
Of course, if you want to claim that a fetus is a man in his own right (that is, distinct from the mother), then I respectfully venture that you will have a hard time explaining why the conversion of the mother should have the effect of converting the fetus as well.
Of course, they're not horrified. Some kind of "witnessing" to legislators is just dan and finedy.
The need for enemies to keep up the funds flowing to, for example, Abe Foxman's enterprise will have the Jews anti-christianing themselves backwards into the hands of the folks who really, really don't like them.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Jews have a history. So? My uncle used to fly bombers and airliners. That's my history. Doesn't mean I should jump out a window and flap my arms, expecting a nice, soft landing. That would be, how can I put this??? an incorrect interpretation of my history.
Besides, it's easier to fool yourself into fearing the folks who won't really harm you. Compared to the ones who would, given a ghost of a chance. Those guys are scary. Best not to even think of them. But that unease, percolating around under the surface, needs to be focused on somebody.
Yes, he did bomb scores of innocent families, and undoubtably killed numerous babies. But he was a soldier, in a war (Police Action, whatever), following orders. To call him a baby killer, or imply that he was a baby killer, is unfair to the extreme. He may not have been a great pilot, DM, but I don't care how many babies his bombs killed; I simply will not label him the infanticide candidate, nor, allow you to do so without challenge.
(As an aside: Has anyone else noticed that you never see Dangermouse and Ann Coulter in the same room at the same time. Hmmmm)