Jewish conservative radio broadcaster, author, and commentator Michael Medved has a friend who is an Orthodox rabbi. This rabbi and his wife have 18 children.
The rabbi told Medved how some years back, when he had 16 children, he and his family were coming through Frankfurt airport. A German woman approached and asked in amazement about his large number of children.
The conversation ended when she asked to the effect, “How many for you would be enough?” And the rabbi replied, “About six million.”
Medved repeated this story to The Chronicle as an illustration of why he contends it is not in the Jewish community’s interest to be so intensely pro-choice on the issue of abortion.
“I mean, here we [American Jews] are, with our 1.2 percent of the [U.S.] population, and our declining communities everywhere, and people say, ‘Oh yeah, we have to worry about too many babies’? That’s the opposite of what we have to worry about,” he said.
Medved, who is based in Seattle, speaks to pro-life/anti-abortion organizations throughout the country. He was in Milwaukee on April 5 as featured speaker at the Wisconsin Right to Life Education Fund Annual Dinner and Auction, which took place at the Frontier Airlines Center.
In an interview with The Chronicle earlier that day at the WISN radio station, from which Medved did his broadcast, Medved said he speaks to such organizations because they “exist by and large to try to discourage abortion and to do everything they can to promote what they call a culture of life, which I enthusiastically support. I think it’s better for the country and I think it’s better for Jews.”
But then why is the majority of the U.S. Jewish community “insanely” opposed to the pro-life movement? Medved believes it is because “most of the pro-life side is so decidedly Christian. And a lot of Jewish people tend instinctively to view Christians who are serious about Christianity as the enemy.”
He said that at the WRL event, he planned to discuss “why the abortion issue is directly connected to the economic issues that are front and center of everybody’s consciousness right now.” Medved contended that the “social issue” of abortion cannot be separated from many such issues.
For example, when it comes to the crisis affecting the federal program of Social Security, “It used to be there would be 16 people who were working to support every one person who’s retired, who is a beneficiary,” Medved said. “We are about to reach the situation where there are only two people working for every beneficiary.”
But that wouldn’t have been the case if the U.S. had not legalized abortion in 1973 in the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Since then probably more than 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S., he said.
Medved said that those aborted in 1973 “would be 37 now and at their peak earning years,” and thereby contributing to Social Security.
Medved also disputed claims that increasing population contributes to deteriorating quality of life. An example he cited was Israel.
“Israel is a perfect illustration of extraordinarily dramatic population growth,” he said. “The Israeli population has doubled in 20 years. Tel Aviv is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the world…
“All of that vitality is associated with this phenomenal [population] growth. The growth is partially result from immigration, but it is mostly the result of the Israeli birthrate.”
Medved added that Israel’s high birthrate does not just result from the high birthrate among religious Jews; secular Israeli Jews also have a higher birthrate that do Jews in the U.S., he said.
Medved acknowledged he has some differences with some people in the anti-abortion movement. “I have been very outspoken, both on the air and in writing” against drawing any analogies between abortion and the Holocaust, for example. Moreover, while he opposes most legalized abortion, he refuses to classify abortion as a form of murder, he said.
Nevertheless, Medved cited Yuval Levin, the founding editor of National Affairs and another Jewish conservative, as saying that “so much of this endlessly tortured issue that won’t go away comes down to this: what is that baby in utero? What is it?”
It may not be a “person,” Medved said, “because personhood we associate with levels of consciousness and willfulness, and, by the way, Jewish tradition does too.” But “It’s not a cancer. It’s not a toenail… It’s tough to argue that it is either not alive or not human.”
Medved himself has three children, a daughter in graduate school, a daughter teaching pre-school, and a son studying at a yeshiva in Israel. His wife, Diane Medved, is a clinical psychologist and author of five books, one of which is “The Case Against Divorce.”
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