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LetMyPeopleVote

(145,129 posts)
Mon Jun 27, 2022, 03:38 PM Jun 2022

The hypocrisy of Christian 'religious freedom' rhetoric post-Roe

I am Jewish and the Dobbs case has ignored Jewish law and has adopt a warped christian view on this issue. Jewish law is clear that live begins at the first breath. These is a Florida synagogue which is suing over this issue



https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/roe-v-wade-overturned-abortion-banned-christian-freedom-what-about-n1296568?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

This is precisely the argument that a South Florida synagogue, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, is making in court. This month, the Palm Beach County synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s 15-week abortion ban on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy and freedom of religion, both of which are codified in the state’s constitution. Jewish law, the suit states, affirms that “abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman.”

Rabbi Samantha Frank, a rabbinic fellow at Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., confirmed to me that in Judaism, reproductive justice goes back to the Torah (the Hebrew Bible), specifically the book of Exodus, in which a differentiation is made between the life of a fetus and the life of a pregnant person. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg recently summarized the story that this argument comes from in an essay for The Atlantic:

“Two people are fighting; one accidentally pushes someone who is pregnant, causing a miscarriage. The text outlines the consequences: If only a miscarriage happens, the harm doer is obligated to pay financial damages. If, however, the pregnant person dies, the case is treated as manslaughter. The meaning is clear: The fetus is regarded as potential life, rather than actual life.”....

“Banning abortion is a violation of our religious liberty and ability to fulfill even our religious obligations, the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Rabbi Ruttenberg told me in an email. “The Talmud [the text that serves as the primary source of Jewish law] considers the fetus ‘mere water’ for the first 40 days after conception and part of the pregnant person's body after that – as potential life until birth, not as actual life at conception. Enshrining one specific theology as law is a violation of the Establishment Clause.”
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The hypocrisy of Christian 'religious freedom' rhetoric post-Roe (Original Post) LetMyPeopleVote Jun 2022 OP
And the Jewish law is much more "deeply rooted in history" Walleye Jun 2022 #1
The Alito sleight-of-hand here... regnaD kciN Jun 2022 #2
Rabbi Barry Silver's Synagogue is suing the state of Florida over its 15-week abortion ban. LetMyPeopleVote Jun 2022 #3
Rt💕TY Cha Jun 2022 #4

regnaD kciN

(26,044 posts)
2. The Alito sleight-of-hand here...
Mon Jun 27, 2022, 03:54 PM
Jun 2022

…is that his ruling doesn’t invoke Christianity at all, but makes a “strictly-legal” ruling based on the understanding (“original intent”) of the law at the time the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. Of course, he conveniently leaves out that, in 1868, there was de facto virtually no separation of church and state, so that the laws of the time had a heavy, if implicit, Christian bias. That way, he can invoke those laws as a basis for overturning later Court decisions, and still claim the decision was on entirely secular grounds.

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