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Abortion: Difference between revisions
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# * It’s a Rabbinical prohibition. There’s no clear prohibition in the Torah, so our only real sources are the rabbinical sources. <ref>Sanhedrin עב; Tzitz Eliezer, Jerusalem, 1963, volume VII, number 48, p. 190.</ref> | # * It’s a Rabbinical prohibition. There’s no clear prohibition in the Torah, so our only real sources are the rabbinical sources. <ref>Sanhedrin עב; Tzitz Eliezer, Jerusalem, 1963, volume VII, number 48, p. 190.</ref> | ||
# * According to the Zohar, one who kills a fetus is guilty of destroying God’s handiwork. <ref>Hok L’Yisrael, Shemot for Monday, Zohar, Shemot 3b</ref> it is unclear if this constitutes a different view of the technical prohibition, or if this is just a reasoning explaining the severity of abortion. A punishment unlike that for murder is detailed. | # * According to the Zohar, one who kills a fetus is guilty of destroying God’s handiwork. <ref>Hok L’Yisrael, Shemot for Monday, Zohar, Shemot 3b</ref> it is unclear if this constitutes a different view of the technical prohibition, or if this is just a reasoning explaining the severity of abortion. A punishment unlike that for murder is detailed. | ||
== Practical Abortion Cases == | |||
#When there is a special case where you are required to kill a fetus or be killed,there is a debate as to what we are allowed to do. In judaism there are three cases that we must die before doing including you must take your life before killing another human. In a case where you are being forced to kill a semi-human is it allowed? | |||
There was a case during World War I in which a doctor was told to abort a baby carried by a mother that had been raped by a German officer. The German told the doctor to abort or be killed. In this kind of case there are two opinions. Rabbi Unterman states that since the prohibition is not murder, but akin to murder, you are allowed to kill the fetus. <ref>I.Y. Unterman, Noam VI (1963), 1-11 as cited in David Feldman, Birth Control In Jewish Law. </ref> Rabbi Moshe Feinstein disagrees and says that abortion is murder, but it is still unclear if you have to die rather than abort. <ref>Iggros Moshe, Choshen Mishpat, Part 2, Chapter 69. </ref> | |||
==Sources== | ==Sources== | ||
<references/>” | <references/>” | ||
