The Laws of Abortion for Jews and Non Jews (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz) Jewish Law Halacha

to talk a little bit about a contemporary topic it's would have been my choice but people wanted to know about abortion we'll talk about abortion again uh i trust and i pray that there should never be any anything no gail to my set for anybody uh yeah right but uh let's go over this as uh just to give you give you the legal background and i'm sure you've been following back in the 1970s uh the supreme courts issued an opinion that's known by the name roe versus wade and in roe versus wade the supreme court created a new constitutional right under american law that a woman has the absolute co-op the absolute right to choose to terminate or keep a pregnancy this was called the right to privacy there is nothing in the u.s constitution that says such a thing but the supreme court kind of created it from a variety of inferences and the like now again um for anyone with legal training this is an obvious point but maybe it's not so obvious to you when you say something is a constitutional right that means the states do not have any power to regulate or prohibit it it's a constitutional right meaning it's not stoma legal right it is a constitutional right which means in other words uh state governments would not have the authority to prohibit abortions at least until the last three months the last trimester what happened a few months ago uh was that the supreme court finally overruled roe versus wade in a 5-4 decision meaning four judges wanted to keep it and donald trump gets 100 of the credit for this or blame again i'm not saying good or bad i mean i think it's good but we'll talk about that but this is absolutely because of donald trump because donald trump appointed three very conservative justices to the supreme court and that made the majority that may made roe versus wade's overruling possible had hillary clinton won the election back in 2016 this absolutely could not have possibly happened now it's important to understand the following and again forgive me for spending a little time on the legal aspects of it allows me to relive my my law professor days another another life another gilgal and that is that the supreme the supreme court did not forbid abortion please understand that overruling roe versus wade does not mean abortion is illegal it means every state can now decide to regulate prohibit or permit okay this is very very important a lot of people misunderstand this overruling roe vs wade simply means states have the freedom now if you have a liberal state like california or new york for the most part this this decision has no effect on them at all they monitored abortion before and they'll match abortion afterwards where it will make a difference is more conservative states which religiously and and morally are against abortion so as long as there was roe versus wade they couldn't do anything about it and now they're given the co-op to do something about it people call those the red states or whatever it would be so the question that obviously we're not here to give a a class on the legal aspects of abortion but the issue is what does say about abortion and is there a difference between the law that applies to non-jews and the law that applies to jews because that's an important point when you say what is the jewish view of abortion that actually breaks down into two separate questions what is the jewish view of abortion for jewish people and what is the jewish view of abortion for non-jewish people a little strange right jews have a view of jews have an opinion on everything we even have an opinion what the guardians should do right and that's going to be the question here so let me start with the gallium first we know of course that the jewish people are bound by the 613 mitzvahs of the torah we also know that the non-jewish worlds are not balanced by the 613 missiles of the torah the torah was only given to the jewish people a non-jew does not have to keep shabbos perhaps should not even keep shabbos a non-jew does not have to put on villain right the 613 are for us but non-jews also have him towards borgo and these are known as the seven spinae nowak the seven noah laws uh so-called because noah was the founder of humanity after the flood but in truth the gemara actually explains that the seven commandments were actually given all the way back to adam harishon with one particular change that one of the seven commandments of noah is you're not allowed to eat a limb that is severed from an animal that's called while it's alive that's called avermin now adam was not allowed to eat meat at all so there was no issa of avermen akai instead there was an issue to eat meat in noah's time that got modified that you're allowed to eat meat but you cannot eat a limb that is severed from an animal that's alive but other than that the mitzvahs beneath actually go back to other marishan now the seven commandments of noah overlap with the ten commandments but they're not at all the same i mean there's overlap but they are also very very different and if you google noah hyde laws which most times is spelled as no like noah n-o-a-h-i-d-e noah height you will actually see a lot of websites of righteous gentiles who are not jewish but they want to keep the noah's laws so they're not christian and they're not muslim they actually believe in god the same way that we believe in god and they believe that the jewish people have a written torah and an oral tar they have all of the beliefs of jewish people but they understand that their job is to be righteous gentiles and the rambam writes righteous gentiles who keep the noahide laws properly have a share in the world to come just as jews do it's a very very amazing thing this is a unique aspect of judaism because most religions if not all teach that the only way you can have eternal life and connection with god is by following their rules christianity sometimes tries to be nice about it but the theology of christianity is very clear you don't believe in you know you have eternal damnation islam is the same thing judaism on the other hand says we don't proselytize judaism says you don't have to be a jew in order to have eternal connection with hashem you do have to keep hashem's laws but for a non-jew there's an alternative way of keeping hashem's laws which is frankly seemingly a bit easier 7-6-13 and that is the seven mitzvahs of noah so whenever we ask a question what is the about these types of issues we actually ask what is the visa via nanju under the noaakite laws and then we ask what is the visa a jew under the 613 commandments of the torah so interestingly enough with respect to the noah hyde code we actually find a very very severe rule and that is the gemaran sanhedrin says if a ben noah if a non-jew ben no just word for non-jew if a non-jew performs an abortion the non-jew is guilty of murder it is treated as a capital offense under the noah code which at a time when capital punishment was administered could actually carry the death penalty and the way the gemara infers it is from a verse when murder is described in the under the noahide code after the flood so the torah says he who spills the blood of a person now note the phrase adam be adam so if you looked at the art scroll translation it would mean he who spills the blood of a person through a person meaning you hired a hitman your blood shall be spilled but if you read it very literally adam be adam is he who kills a person in a person so the talmud says what is a person inside of a person that would be a fetus and the torah says now this is under the noahchide load a code the torah says damoi his blood shall be spilled which means under the noahite code abortion is tantamount to murder and it is a capital offense it is a capital crime now that has some interesting implications we know that and this applies to non-jews as well that if somebody is about to kill somebody i am permitted and even commanded to kill the person who is about to kill somebody else right that is called the famous law of roe dave that is why we can shoot a terrorist and the like now it's important to keep in mind the law of rodaif is not based on punishment once the terrorist has killed somebody i'm not allowed to kill him he has to be tried by a court the purpose of the law of rodaif is not to punish bad people the purpose of the law of rohdef is to prevent in fact a few years ago there was a case in israel involving a soldier in which a terrorist had been knocked to the ground and the way the video had it was an israeli soldier just went over to him put a gun to his head and shot him and the israeli soldier was court-martialed and being tried for murder on the ground that once the terrorists finished his terrorism and he's no longer a danger you're not allowed to kill him he has to be tried by a bastion by a court something now the soldier's argument was that the guy was still crawling towards a weapon so again i can't take a position on this one way or the other i don't know the mithias but in principle the army is correct meaning once a terrorist has been immobilized and is no longer a sakana then you're dealing with punishment you're not dealing with prevention once you're dealing with punishment you normally need a bastion or a court that's another sheila it's not shy the dinner of ray dave does not apply now what has happened in the united states every once in a while is that we've had what are called pro-life people these usually christian fundamentalists who are very very anti-abortion and they weighed in ambush in front of a hospital and when the abortion doctor shows up and gets out of his car they kill the abortion doctor and they claim that they're doing so to protect the lives of the innocent babies that are otherwise going to be aborted now they're not using the halachic term but essentially their argument is that if life begins upon conception then the same way i could kill somebody who's trying to kill an innocent person i could kill somebody who's trying to kill an innocent fetus so the interesting question is according to how would halaqa assess that claim would halaqa allow me or a non-jew me or a non-jew to kill an abortion doctor who's about to perform an abortion based on the grounds that they wrote if now let me point out under american law this never works because i mean me i mean now maybe it's interesting but as long as roe versus wade was the law that abortion was a permitted procedure then you can't kill the abortion doctor for doing what he's allowed to do so these guys always went to jail these guys were arrested they went to jail sometimes the jury would recommend a very lenient sentence etc depending on the like but nevada it was a crime so i don't want to get in trouble here and you know don't circulate well i guess sorry anytime sends it to the united states but okay the question would be though if indeed the abortion of a uh the abortion performed by a non-jew is considered to be a paula of ritsika would that make the abortion doctor a rhodef who you'd be allowed to kill keep that question in mind now to make this even more complicated even though abortion is a capital crime under the laws of noah abortion is not a capital crime under the 613 mitzvahs of the torah meaning to say that if i as a jewish person perform an abortion i am not we'll talk about why is it us or at all but i'm not guilty of murder now how do i know that i mean after all if it says by binay no then what would be the basis to be more lenient in the case of a jew so there are two sources that abortion is not a capital crime under the law of the torah source one is a drasha from the mekhilta the magilta is the halachic madrish of khazal on the book of shemos where it says if you smite if you kill the soul of a person your blood shall be spilled now that's not by the nullarchite code that's by israel code by the jewish law and and russia in the mesut nephesh means a fully born person and not an unborn person meaning killing an unborn person is not called killing a total nephesh the nephesh is not yet independent from the mother and therefore the magilta actually darshans it is not a capital crime for a jew a second makhar is an interesting halacha in there are many gemaras in bavakama about this let's say two guys are fighting two men are fighting and a pregnant woman foolishly interposes herself between the guys to stop fighting and she gets a punch in the belly and god forbid there is a miscarriage so the torah imposes financial liability this is called the may values that uh the husband of the woman gets what they're called compensation for the loss of fetal life now you know there's a general rule in halakhah i know if you some of you might not have known this that if i commit a single action which carries a death penalty and a financial obligation the halacha is that the death penalty cancels out the financial obligation an example would be if i shoot somebody uh and i as a result there's blood that splatters on an expensive carpet or a ming vase gets shattered in the bullet so since i'm high of misa i don't have to pay for the broken vase and i don't have to pay for cleaning the carpet this is the famous rule come lay bidrabine that the greater punishment of death cancels out financial responsibility so here's the argument if killing a fetus would be a capital crime of murder then how could we obligate the perpetrator to pay money the capital he of misa would cancel out the monetary obligation so if we see there's a monetary obligation al-qarca you're forced to say that there is no key of misa so we now have a very curious dichotomy that seems to be counter-intuitive oh okay let me i mean before i get let me get to a second point so it turns out that abortion under the noahcy code is a capital crime abortion under jewish law for jews is not a capital crime but the question is so why is it us or at all meaning if it's not murder why is it usual okay so there's a big big machlakes among many we shine in him what is the source of abortion being prohibited under jewish law given the fact that there is clearly no capital punishment for the killing of a fetus even if it's nine months even if it's fully uh developed in the womb so some opinions say it actually is murder but there's a gizera sarcasm that it doesn't carry the death penalty meaning just because this type of murder does not carry the death penalty does not negate that essentially it is murder so that's actually the simplest understanding it is murder for which there is a there's a gezera sarcassive that there's no key of misa that would mean in other words abortion under the noah code is murder with capital punishment abortion under jewish law is murder without capital punishment that's one interpretation others say that the fetus is not considered a person and killing the fetus under jewish law is not murder the law against abortion does not embrace the notion of life begins at conception but the problem of the fetus is not that it is a person but it is a potential that can develop into a person in the course of nine months in birth so the issue of abortion is not murder but the frustration of a potential to life in other words in a more philosophical language this would actually mean halacha rejects the notion of the fetus being a person so the fetus per se does not have rights to live but the torah says that that which could develop into a person it's not a right because it's not here yet uh you don't you're not the matress and the khabib says that this is a kalba homer from we know there's a prohibition of masturbation of wasting male seed and what issue is that that's certainly not a human life you're not murdering anything but since the male seed would have the potential to generate life you're not allowed to destroy that which potentially could become life the javascript basically says the issur of abortion is like hashtag so these are two different ways of looking at it now the problem with this is this you then have a kind of an incoherence because the hyde idea and the torah idea do not seem to match up for example in the secular world when people debate uh you know people who are against abortion go by the name pro-life instead of anti-abortion actually there's some genius in the market in here because people like you know they like you if you're pro-something they don't like you if you're anti-something so anti-abortion people invented the name pro-life and what's even more brilliant is the pro-abortion people pro-abortion that doesn't sound right who's pro-abortion i'm not pro-abortion i'm pro-choice oh i like choice choice is good again the marketing is very very pro-choice is actually a very brilliant designation for people who are fundamentally pro pro-abortion although i will say uh there's a great criticism of the pro-life movement because they're very anti-abortion which which is good by and large but but they don't like to help kids once they're born they're against welfare they're against helping families so the joke about the pro-life movement and it's a good joke although i i'm closer to pro-life but the joke is pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth meaning to say everything is about that fetus once the kid is born you know who cares what happens to him at that at that point and and i do want to say i mean and this is just as a side point that's very very important if you're going to have a society that stands up for the rights of the unborn and prohibits abortion and which you know which is good i think but but you can't just let you know mothers of unwanted pregnancies bear the burden without giving them the support system that they need so if you want to be pro-life then you got to be pro-life in the totality of pro-life not just prohibit abortion but you got to talk about the welfare and the financial resources the psychological resources the medical help that people need to be able to either raise a child or to give a child up for adoption or whatever it would be it's very very irresponsible to throw somebody under the bus and say you have to have this kid and we are not going to help you at all when you go ahead and have it so that is an important point meaning uh there is an acharyas i think a very solemn responsibility on states that are going to have tough abortion laws to create safety nets and create systems that help women in need because truth the matter is although economic despondency is not a justification for an abortion but but lameisa people are in deep deep deep trouble both financially and emotionally and there would be there would be a need for a responsibility to help them in that way but okay but here's the thing it's commonly said that pro-life people believe life begins at conception and pro-choice people say life does not begin until the child is born now if i were to ask you according to judaism when does life begin does life begin at conception or does life begin at birth now how are you even going to be able to answer that in a coherent way what are you going to say well if it's a guy under the noachite law life begins that conception because killing a fetus is murder but under jewish law life does not begin until birth because killing the fetus is not murder that's a nonsensical answer especially since and i'll show you how even more nonsensical it is the killer between jew and is not based on the identity of the baby it's based on the identity of the person performing the abortion that meaning to say if a non-jew performs an abortion on a jew or a non-jewish person he's high of misa if a jew performs an abortion on a jewish woman or a non-jewish woman he's not jayamisa now it's the same baby so what are you telling me if a guy is the abortion doctor life begins at conception if a jew is an abortion doctor life doesn't begin at birth see that doesn't make sense so i mean you can't have a a differential definition on the same baby depending on the identity of the wrongdoer so in a way uh the the typical binary description of does life begin at conception or does life begin at birth is an incoherent application to this rule so the only two ways you have to describe it is there are two ways you can learn if you learn like the opinion that even for jews abortion is murder then we basically would say life begins at conception both under the noah's coat and under jewish law but for whatever reason even then we have to have a good reason jewish law does not impose capital punishment for that murder but it is murder on both sides of it right so that's one way of looking at it or if you follow the chavas yaya we look at the other way life does not begin upon life does not begin until birth and that is why it is not murder under jewish law but under the noah guide law there is a stringency that even the frustration of potential life is included in murder but not that it is a murder but it's an extension of murder okay again you think about this you'll see the the great difficulty in pigeonholing uh this this dichotomy now you may still ask me a general question why whatever the reason is whatever the lumber says whatever the swara is why on earth should the law be stricter for non-jews than it would be for jews that's very strange jewish law is normally stricter than non-jewish law why is this stricter for non-jews truth is we really don't know a lot of this is based on sukim but one reason might be kind of a prophylactic idea and that is abortion was so common in the ancient world but the greeks the romans the babylonians et cetera that when god wanted to stamp out the process he had to create a more rigorous stricter punishment structure which was less necessary for chloe's meaning to say the umota allam were mashukah as they are today as a matter of fact in this particular avera and therefore the punishment had to be much greater okay be it as it may this is the dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice now i'm sorry between i'm sorry between noah hyde law and uh and the law of the torah that applies to a jewish person now common denominator though is that abortion is prohibited both for jews and non-jews although for different reasons possibly common denominator so the question then becomes are there circumstances where abortion will be permitted so we have one mishna a mishna in massachusetts which clearly tells us that if the mother's life is in danger meaning if there's a risk that she will die if the baby is brought to term and born she will die even if it's only a risk so the halakhah is abortion is permitted of the mother and our assumption is this would apply to the noahide code as well although there's some discussion about that now there are a number of questions about this when we say abortion is permitted is abortion permitted or is abortion required what if the mother would say for example she would prefer to have the baby and die i mean i'll give you an actual example these were cases where a pregnant woman was in advanced cancer and at most it was thought she only had a few months to live but with the stress on her body of giving birth to a child she would die right away so she might say this might be a reasonable decision i would rather have the child and die in childbirth then abort the child and live for another six months in terms of pure logic that actually is a logical decision because if the woman is going to die anyway but giving birth will accelerate her death but if she gives birth she'll have a child that will survive her so that's a big mach locust when we say abortion is permitted for the piku nephesh of the mother can the mother herself wave that in the interest of having a child now if you say she can i'm going to give you another question a question on top of that question im tim salomar she can could the husband make such a decision if the wife is incapacitated example the woman is unconscious she is on life support she is in a coma she happens to be pregnant uh it is probable because of cancer or whatever the condition that if she gives birth she will die in that process now i had mentioned if she would be awake there's a much locus could she make the decision to give up her life for her child but even if we assume she could make the decision would the husband have the right to make that decision with the husband have the right to say you know i want to have the baby so to speak that's what my wife would have wanted very difficult questions these are very very difficult questions because essentially the husband is making a decision to condemn his wife to death by allowing the birth to go ahead and you see this is so tragic because what's going to happen is she gives birth and she dies on the other the other side is do the abortion so there's no baby and she'll die a few months later anyway there's no happy solution but that's one issue of pikua nephesh to keep in mind a second issue of nephesh is the very important idea just giving you kind of an outline here that psychological stress is very much a component of pikachu because people who can have mental breakdowns can very easily be suicidal and they can harm themselves or harm others now this is how halacha would view rape or incest you sometimes hear pro-lifers say i am against abortion except in cases of rape or incest now in some ways that's an incoherence position because if you take the view that life begins upon conception i mean could you kill a born baby if a bear doesn't assume a baby was born as a result of rape or incest would a woman be allowed to say it's so traumatic for me to have a baby coming from a princess i want to kill the baby nobody would allow that you wouldn't be allowed to kill a baby because of the trauma of rape or incest so how are you allowed to do it if it's an abortion if you're equating that with a born baby so because of this the way how lucky approaches rape or incest is not by creating a rape or incest exception but by recognizing ap coach nevis exception meaning if the circumstances are so traumatic that they are potentially life-threatening and that depends on every individual case then abortion is permitted not because of rape or incest but because of because and that depends on the person they tell the story i have no idea if the story is true i i'm not vouching for its accuracy that there was a religious teenager years ago who was raped and a single one she was single and she got pregnant and she was carrying twins and the rapist was black i'm only mentioning it because it'll come out the way the children would be born now you can imagine maybe you can't imagine how traumatizing uh this would be for any girl any girl and for a religious girl you know many many more levels and the woman the young lady was so distraught that she actually was on the verge of suicide and her parents arranged a meeting with ramosa feinstein to discuss what her options are what her choices are and you'll either like this or you'll hate this remote just spoke to her for three or four hours andre moshe told her words that it may be very hard for us to grasp and ramosha said you know that the babies that you're carrying are jewish babies because you're a jewish woman and these are jewish children and ramosa says i i don't know why this happened to you and how such a tragedy and why these nashamos came into the world in such an awful way but you're able to raise them to beat sadiq to be tamil to sanctify god's name and he spoke to her for a number of hours and she was placated and she was calmed down and she resolved to have the babies and raise them i don't know the whole story if i don't i don't even know if the story is true but the but the story goes that she raised these were twins they they were you know black they had african-american features and the story goes that they became both tommy they're twin brothers they became tamil and rabbanim and they married their families and in spite of this awful origin of how they came into the world they became very very fine jews and they brought nachas to their mother very very strange in the gemara itself by the way in the gemara itself uh there's the story about the daughter of shmuel daughter of shmuel was taken captive by a guy who apparently you know raped her and had a child she had a child from that boy but you know you can never underestimate a good woman this guy that raped her converted became a religious jew is mentioned more a few times and the son is rav mari who is called the son of shmuel's daughter why is he called the son of shmuel's daughter because a guy that has a child from a jewish woman is not a guy as the traveling jewish woman is not halal of the father so quite literally uh yobamasham this story about dramosha seems to be the story of israel giora in the gemara itself but when push comes to shove i do want to emphasize if indeed a person is so distraught so devastated so broken that there really is a life-threatening situation recognizes on a psychological dimension okay that's the pikachu now the final practice that's so interesting is it doesn't make sense why are you allowed to kill the baby in order to save the mother we know that most of the torah can always be violated to save a life that's not even violation i violate shabbos to save a life i violate kosheros i violate jim kipper i remember in my own show it was interesting that unfortunately the the elderly father of one of the congregants who was visiting uh uh his daughter for pesach collapsed in the middle of davening he was an elderly man he collapsed i think he was dehydrated so it was shabbos uh i went to the phone to dial 9-1-1 and i ibizafka left the door open so people should see that i was dialing 9-1-1 because it was because and i still remember this um five-year-old kid walked by and said hey the rabbi's on the phone i'm travis you know that he noticed it and thank god the person was only dehydrated so he actually was okay but that didn't mean i did an aveira i mean if it looks like pikachu you're a makoyev to do what you have to do right so we know because is very very important obviously but we also know that you cannot allow murder right if i go over to you if a guy goes over to me and says kill him or i'll kill you i can kill the guy that's threatening me because he's a rotate but i cannot kill an innocent person to save my life right because as the gemara says who says my life is better than his life but my pikuak nephesh allows me to kill him the tyrus says might be correct nephesh is greater than shabbos it's greater than kashmiris it's greater than yom kippur that's a hierarchy preservation of life is greater than all of those commandments but you logically cannot say preservation of life is greater than the issue of murder because when you're murdering you're taking a life so it's a dover push it this is my question who says your blood is any redder for some reason they always translate it sweeter but the word is red or sumka is red not sweet so here's the question if this baby is born mom is going to die so the mishna says in ohalos i can kill the the unborn baby to save the mother why you can't kill one person to save another person why is there a hetero so fascinatingly there's an interesting mahlokas rashi and the rambam why pikuac nephesh of the mother allows the termination of a pregnancy this ties into our earlier discussion rashi says because the fetus is not really a life the fetus is a potential that can become a life when it's born and even though as a potential you try to protect it an actual life has priority over a potentiality in rashi's language the unborn fetus is not a nephesh gum more that's how rashi understands it it's only a potential so yes i can't kill one nephesh gumor in order to save another nephesh gomorrah but i can frustrate a potentiality from developing in order to save an actual life in being so how serious is the risk to life must be the risk to life another for consider it already a case of yeah that's a good question i mean i mean for example if there's a one in a million chance that the woman might die that would not be a justification uh generally speaking it's around a 10 percent we say 10 10 or more is enough already to justify termination now let me uh yeah there seems to be no in between i there there are some opinions that talk about uh the the third trimester meaning after two trimesters in which the body is is developed uh there is one view that therefore is is uh makes that difference but generally speaking it's either conception or birth and we don't really look at intermediate categories now let me just mention the rambam the rambam apparently rejects rashi and the rambam apparently does treat the fetus as a person and the ramen has a very interesting concept here it's based out of gemara the rambam says the reason why i can kill the fetus to save the mother is because since the fetus is the source of why the mother's life is in danger the fetus has the halacha of a rhodef now this is pretty amazing when we think of rhodef we think of bad people we think of terrorists we think of criminals we think of guys with sub-machine guns we don't think of unborn babies as ro-dave but the truth of the matter is the gemara does give an example of a cut down being a writer i mean let's let's imagine for example and this can happen that you have a gun at home and it's loaded it should never happen but your three-year-old finds the gun and walks into a crowded shabbos dining room brandishing the gun now obviously you try to take the gun away in a safe way etc but i hate to say this uh if the only way to prevent people from being hurt is by killing the cotton you havely would be allowed to kill the katan because one can be a rodeo even without malevolent intent they give another example from the holocaust in which a bunch of jews were hiding in a bunker and the nazis were searching the area for jews if they found the jews they would kill them all and a mother and a baby the baby starts crying now the story as they tell it and this i think is a true story is that the mother put a blanket over the baby's mouth just to muzzle the cry and unfortunately the baby suffocated that i think actually is a true story and again very very tragic but i'm going to say something that's even more tragic and that is according to it is possible i'm not giving up such it is possible that the nine people could kill the baby because if the baby's cries are creating the endangerment from the nazis the baby now becomes the road dave the road dave is the one is the source of the endangerment so we do have examples that non-malevolent actors can be rochem so the rambam is again it's really based on a gemura that the hectare of abortion when the mother's life is in danger is because the fetus is a rhodef so according to rashi the hector of abortion is because the fetus is not a complete life according to the rambam the hector of abortion is the fetus might be a life but it becomes a road dave that can be terminated there are nafta means there are actually differences in this approach we don't have time to go into it maybe i'll do a part two to elaborate on this uh next time but this is an important mach locus to be aware of so now just uh the last few minutes let me just address a final question so as an orthodox person uh am i happy that roe versus wade was repealed or am i unhappy meaning to say is roe versus wade better or is not having roe versus wade better so here's an interesting argument under roe versus wade abortions were virtually totally legal in the united states and maybe until the last three months where there could be some regulation but the first six months there was fundamentally no regulation at all are no restriction at all rather on the illegality of abortion in that situation millions and millions and millions of pregnancies have been terminated over the past 40 45 years lives that should not have been terminated uh whether you call it murder or frustration or potential so in in a sense the repeal of roe versus weight will reduce abortions not eliminate them and you might say that's a good thing because if the torah is against abortion both for jews and non-jews laws that reduce abortion is bringing society closer to that which the torah envisions so would be hashem we got rid of roe versus wade see if it just would have been a jewish thing then you know who gives us the right to impose things on non-jews but once it becomes part of the noahide code then for carrots any legal system that brings us closer to fulfilling the nullarchite code would be good that's one side of the question but there's another side of the question and and that is this from the perspective of a religious jew right rouhani and sarah are a religious husband and wife under roe versus wade in which abortion was absolutely legal then if they had a shiela of picoac nephesh or would an abortion be justified the only thing they had to consult was their doctor and their postsync the government had no input into that decision and therefore the government could not inhibit their religious freedom by contrast once you get rid of roe versus wayne let's assume you have a law in like louisiana abortion is only permitted if the mother's life is in danger but the decision is the mother's life in danger is now not only going to be a decision of a doctor and a postsync it now becomes the decision of the state's attorney for new orleans which means theoretically a rav mike poskin that psychological stress is nefesh and the secular authorities might not agree so the interesting paradox is from jews in terms of themselves actually do better with roe versus weight than without drove versus weight because roe versus wade leaves me the unfettered choice to follow with no repercussions so my life no our life with our spouses is marginally better with roe versus way than without on the other hand in terms of society as a whole the repeal of roe versus wade is better because it brings society in closer attunement with the morality of of so that's something you think about there actually could be a debate in which a person might be philosophically and religiously pro-life but politically would be in favor of a pro-choice position in not getting the government involved in that type of decision making these are you know things to think about um yeah where do you draw the line between having the government make a decision on uh cases that involve murder and abortion meaning if we're saying that it's better that the government stay out of abortion so that right you let them stay out of murder right why not yeah that's a very good question meaning even a libertarian who is against the government doing a lot of things the one exception they always make is for crimes of violence and life there you need a government to step in it's a very excellent question because if one took the position abortion is murder then why should i why should i be in favor of a hands-off attitude in the part of the government it's a strong argument but i think the counter-argument might be that when you have uh an issue in which society itself is very sharply divided in which rightly or wrongly there is no consensus then sometimes we're better served by the government not getting involved and giving people the freedom to make certain decisions as opposed to murder in which everybody every normal person agrees that murder is wrong meaning i think there's a difference between issues in which there is consensus and issues in which there's not consensus but you know it's a good it is a very good it is a very good point so to put it in a maybe a crude way a crass way uh roe versus wade is better for the from jews and the repeal of roe versus wade is better for non-firm jews and so therefore from people do better with roe versus wade society does better religious religiously that is if you get rid of roe versus wade because that will restrict abortion but again i don't want to be callous about this because you know you can't just talk about oh abortion is bad we got to stop abortions i mean there are women who are suffering single mothers poverty-stricken under tremendous emotional strain if you are go again i'm just repeating if you are going to prohibit abortion you have to give mothers the resources that they need to either be able to raise the children or to put them up for adoption you cannot just like this is a general rule in trinidad even with their own children you don't forbid something unless you give people the resources to be able to deal with it you can't just say us or other us or sir that's true for and that's true for an issue like like abortion as well so i think next week i'll be moms with this because i want to discuss a very interesting medical technology many of you might might have heard of stem cell research and i want to discuss the application of abortion law to the retrieval of stem cells because stem cells doesn't do involve destroying an embryo and the mayo the question is are the destruction of embryos within the abortion loss according to right so can there be stem cell research or another aspect of this is pre-implantation genetic screening where people who go through an in vitro fertilization and have embryos the embryos can be examined under the microscope for genetic defects like tay sachs or like down syndrome and in the secular world if they have these defects they will not be implanted right this is called pre-implantation right before it goes into the mother's body pre-implantation genetic screening pgs is the reshetteva and the question becomes does that involve abortion so what's interesting about this is that abortion does not only come up when you're trying to terminate a pregnancy abortion issues come up when you're trying to have a child but you have a husband and wife who want to have children through in vitro fertilization and yet there can be abortion issues in terms of pre-implantation genetic screening and in terms of using spare embryos spare embryos for stem cell research so we'll maybe talk about that next week