Posted on 12/24/2007 7:17:02 AM PST by Alouette
Rabbinic Council of Chief Rabbinate to establish committee to lobby against abortions in Israel. Rabbis: Abortions delaying coming of messiah
Neta Sela Published: 12.24.07, 07:27 / Israel Jewish Scene
Israel's Chief Rabbinate decided over the weekend that it would establish a special committee that would work to reduce the amount of abortions carried out in Israel.
Both Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger supported the Rabbinical Council's decision.
The council made the decision after Dr. Eli Schussheim, director of the anti-abortion organization Efrat, presented the rabbis with facts and figures on the amount of abortions carried out in Israel yearly.
According to Dr. Schussheim, 50,000 abortions occur in Israel every year, only 20,000 of which are legally performed.
The Rabbinic Council, which is made up of the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Rabbi Shaar-Yeshuv Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Rehovot, Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook and Beersheba’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda Deri, has decided to have the new committee begin work this coming Saturday.
"The vast majority of abortions are unnecessary and strictly forbidden according to halacha because they are carried out even when the pregnancies do not endanger the mother's health," the rabbis wrote in their decision.
The rabbis believe that these types of abortions are a grave sin which may even delay the coming of the messiah. They base this assumption on an expression uttered by the Jewish sages which can be construed as signifying that the messiah will not arrive until all souls meant to be born to Jewish mothers are in fact born.
The halachic basis for the rabbis anti-abortion position is articulated in Genesis 9:6 which reads: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man."
The rabbis see fetuses as constituting a "man" based on a Gemara passage which states that a fetus in its mother's womb should already be considered a human being.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
please ping the pro-lifers
What makes it news is that it is necessary to say it.
Catholics agree with the fact that abortion is a grave sin.
I am glad to have people learn that there are Jews in this world (such as myself) who are proudly pro-Life and unafraid to say so. One would think that after the Holocaust, there would not be such moral confusion about the value of the greatest gift God has given us and our duty to nourish and protect it.
Jews disagree with Catholics in that we believe it is permitted to perform an abortion if the mother's life is in grave and immediate danger.
This is a very rare case, virtually non-existent now with medical technology, so it is possible in these days to save the mother's life and also save the baby.
The overwhelming number of abortions performed in Israel are done for pure convenience, which is most certainly a very severe sin.
Hooray!
To: fanfan
Below the "HR line" ( html for Horizontal Rule, a strike line ) I will copy a couple of my writings at Free Dominion on the subject, but I will say this:
If, you believe as I do that a baby is not a "fetus," or a diseased appendix, or an infected tonsil, then you have to believe that abortion is an evil, ugly thing at best.
That said, like many older people, I've been hungry, alone, and desperate- I certainly can sympathize with women who feel like they have no other choice.
But the current practice of far too many women of using abortion as a kind of retroactive birth control an awful one- besides killing the innocent and defenseless, it demeans them, as well. How do you tell the children you did not abort "what I did to your brother or sister?"
I have always thought Roe V. Wade was a bad law- there's no "right" to abortion in any copy of the Constitution I've read- maybe made for good reasons ( I really do no want to see criminal abortions brought back in to law. ) but it has had "unintended consequences"-- like the 50 million Americans we don't have as customers, husbands & wives, and citizens.
With no further ado, my old comments:
Abortion is a great evil... once, long ago, most women seemed to know this,
and now, it seems few do. To change society back to this, we need to educate,
and change hardened hearts back...
A few weeks after I joined Free Republic,
I chanced upon a discussion about abortion that, for some reason, had turned
into an exchange involving mostly female members of the board.
I was struck
by several salient points:
First, the most telling question from the little ones:
"Mommy, what's an
'abortion?'"
I can recall being in my teens before I ever heard the nasty
word- but our women here reported that their children as young as 5 or 6 years
were asking it... if this is "progress," please count me out.
Then there
were the childrens reactions- universal disgust and horror that "any Mommy
could do that to her baby..."
But for me, the clincher was a brief
exchange between two other women members-- they were talking about what their
children remembered when they were in their wombs... FReeper "bootless" had
asked her toddler
( who, she said, was not really talking yet- about 2
years old- "just babbles... )
she asked him:
"Do you remember what it was
like being in Mommy's tummy?"
His answer chilled me to the bone, and still
makes my hair stand on end. His reply?
"Wet..."
Education, is the key:
Bringing Good Things to Life (ULTRASOUND)
FYI, and FWIW, virtually all the founders of the Women's Movement... were against abortion:
http://www.rightgrrl.com/wquotes.html
Some Women's Quotes Regarding Abortion
Past and Present
I think I know of one example. A woman was pregnant with triplets, and she became diagnosed with a fast spreading cancer. The doctors advised her to abort them all, else she would die.
Still, being her choice she decided to continue to delivery.
The triplets were delivered. They survived and are doing very well, years later.
She also lived and her cancer just went away.
At that, from what I've heard, Israel is not nearly so permissive about abortion as other countries. Doesn't a woman who wants one have to go before some kind of board for permission? Economic "necessity" isn't considered a good reason. I heard this years ago, so it may not be the current situation, but the citation of more than twice as many illegal abortions as legal makes me think the situation today isn't too different.
New voice to ancient thought. Finally!
http://www.friendsofefrat.org/
ML/NJ
My wife and I were told to consider abortion with our last child. Her cardiologist was worried she wouldn’t make it to term with her bad heart valve. He told me we I could lose both of them. My family prayed...some of you FReepers prayed...and we trusted God. My baby is very healthy 4 year old.
My wife still has a heart murmur, but after tens of thousands of dollars (not counting our insurance)...including a trip to the Mayo Clinic...she is very healthy.
So do Baptists.
"Abortion is murder, plain and simple." -Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, Da Ma Shetoshiv
Alouette, thank you for posting this. May God bless you for your good and caring heart, and may God save all the unborn babies of Israel, whom He created for a good purpose.
May they grow up to be a blesing to their families, to the nation of Israel and to the world.
Please forward to Holy Joe Lieberman..
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