In passing the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives not only fired the latest shot in this country’s long-standing cultural-legal war over abortion.
It also passed a measure that flatly contradicts a passage in the Bible that has helped shape the Jewish understanding of the abortion issue, according to several Wisconsin rabbis.
The federal bill, which passed 252-172 and has been submitted to the U.S. Senate, creates criminal penalties for someone who causes death or injury to a “child who is in utero” when that perpetrator commits any one of 68 federal crimes.
The bill, moreover, says that the punishment would be “the same as the punishment provided … had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child’s mother.”
In the Bible, however (Exodus 21:22-24), God tells Moses that: “When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined…. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise” (Jewish Publication Society translation).
In telephone conversations, rabbis of different denominations agreed that the House bill clashes with what this biblical law states about the difference between a fetus and a born person.
“The fact that the Torah says there is a financial liability shows that there is some value to the fetus, [but] it is not a situation that is manslaughter,” said Rabbi Mendel Senderovic of the Milwaukee Kollel Center for Jewish Studies (Orthodox). “Clearly [destroying a fetus] is not on the same level as harm to the mother.”
“It seems clear from that Exodus passage that in the time of the Torah the fetus did not have the status that a mother had,” said Rabbi Dena Feingold, spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Temple (Reform) in Kenosha and president of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis. “The bill goes against my understanding of how Judaism would perceive this issue.”
“This is one place where Judaism significantly differs from Christianity, or certain forms of Christianity,” said Rabbi Brian Field, spiritual leader of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim (Reconstructionist/Renewal) in Madison. “If this law passes, the lawmakers are making a clear choice of a Christian understanding of humanity over a Jewish one.”
Field added that the House bill therefore “is one example of where the idea of a single ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ is undermined.”
This is not to say that these rabbis agree about the abortion issue itself. Senderovic said that the Exodus passage shows that abortion is an offense, just not the same level of offense as killing a born person.
Rabbi Gideon Goldenholz, spiritual leader of Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue (Conservative) in Mequon, said the House bill “may be an attempt to inch closer to making it illegal to have any kind of abortion.”
“I’m not pro-abortion,” Goldenholz said, “but there certainly are times when it is warranted. Making abortion a crime is not very good at all.”
Feingold described the bill as “troubling. It seems to me to be yet another attempt by people who feel they know what is right and wrong to teach the country by legislating their viewpoint … strong-arming the American public…. It’s linked to the abortion issue, but even if it weren’t it would trouble me.”
Senderovic added that the bill is one more demonstration that “we’re not living in a Jewish country and society…. Obviously I would like the moral understandings of the Torah to find their way in U.S. society [but] as long as [lawmakers] base laws on their feelings and not on laws given to Moses at Sinai, I would expect deviations.”
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