This Shabbat: Reproductive Freedom

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dear companions,

The National Council of Jewish Women has proclaimed this Shabbat the Shabbat of Reproductive Freedom. Why?

This shabbat, the Torah portion that we read, called Mishpatimor Regulations, includes the one verse of Torah that deals with what we call “abortion":
 
Exodus 21:22 (Everett Fox translation, “The Five Books of Moses" (Schocken):  “When two men scuffle and deal a blow to a pregnant woman, so that her children abort-forth, but (other) harm does not occur, he is to be fined, yes, fined, as the woman's spouse imposes for him, but he is to give it (only) according to assessment.”
 
It could not be clearer that Torah does not view this as murder or anything like it. Even though this act is against the woman’s will, it is a civil offense, depriving the family of property, not a crime.
 
And there is a deeper line of Torah, involving the theology of human life, which for Jewish tradition — and could be for all who claim the Five Books as divine or sacred wisdom — defines when human life begins:
 
Genesis 2: 4-7 (Fox translation): “These are the begettings of the heavens and the earth: their being created. At the time of YHWH [Yahhh, Breath of Life], God's making of earth and heaven no bush of the field was yet on earth, no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for YHWH [Yahhh, Breath of Life], God had not made it rain upon earth, and there was no human/adam to till the soil/adamah but a surge would well up from the ground and water all the face of the soil; and YHWH [Yahhh, Breath of Life], God, formed the human, of dust from the soil, he blew into his [her/their] nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being.”
 
That parable mirrors the actual birth-process of human and other mammalian life-forms, where the -ah of breath is first breathed through the placenta — but after birth, the new-born being needs a breath from the Breath of Life. Not till then is the newborn really alive.

Shabbat shalom,
Arthur