When Does Life Being?

A Jewish Perspective

“Nineteen hundred years ago when Caesar Anthony asked this question of Rabbi Yehudah Ha’Nasee, the rabbi replied: “From the moment the fetus emerges from the womb” (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 34:10). The 11th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) explained: “for the fetus in the womb is not considered a person until it is born” (Talmud Bav’li, Sanhedrin 72b). Earlier rabbinic codes clearly place the welfare of the mother first, and “if a woman experiences difficulty in childbirth, the fetus is dismembered within her, limb by limb, because her life takes precedence” (Mishnah Ohalot 7:6 and Talmud Yerushalmi, Sanhedrin, end of Ch. 8).

Not only her life, later rabbis added, but her emotional well-being. “While woman is biologically equipped to bear children,” writes Rav Yeruchem Perilman (19th century), “she is nevertheless not as a clump of earth, and is therefore not obliged to nurture seed implanted within her against her will” (in Ohr Gadol No. 31).

Classical Jewish rulings concerning abortion rely primarily on the woman’s instinct, and they respect that until the fetus emerges from the womb, it remains an integral part of the woman’s body alone.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Walking Stick Foundation
Thousand Oaks, CA”

References:

• Moment Magazine (PDF)