Synagogue sues Florida over abortion limits, a possible template for future challenges

France24 ^ | June 28, 2022

[Gaffer]

The American Jew and the Jews of the rest of the world are two completely different things.

[Jim Noble]

As you are no doubt aware, once “health of the mother” was introduced as a theoretical abortion limiting strategy, threats of suicide exploded and were almost always accepted as an acceptable indication.

Since I am not a birthing person, this would not apply to me personally.

[Campion]

So you believe in a “living constitution”, one that means whatever a particular court decides.

I think you're the only person I've ever met who thought that the guarantee of free speech in the First Amendment was absolute and unrestricted. I take it you think that laws against child pornography are unconstitutional?

Those prohibitions apply to the state not private citizens or entities.

A government which routinely allows private citizens to murder other private citizens is obviously not preventing those murder victims from being deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. That language is not just a negative prohibition but also imposes a positive obligation on government. That's what federal civil rights laws are all about.

any of them are fine as long as they don’t go against some explicit” right” in the constitution, such as the right to exercise your religion.

So you're seriously proposing that someone can shoot up a school and kill a bunch of kids, and expect to be let off on constitutional grounds by claiming that shooting innocent kids is part of his religion?

Yeah, right. Thanks for playing.

[af_vet_1981]

Actually, according to Jacob Neusner, abortion is forbidden in the Talmud, unless the life, not the health, of the mother is endangered by delivering the baby, in which case abortion is required.

Yes, the Talmud deals with many details in life. However these are a fair representation of the non-negotiable elements of Judaism.

The Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith

Maimonides

The great codifier of Torah law and Jewish philosophy, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon ("Maimonides" also known as "The Rambam"), compiled what he refers to as the Shloshah Asar Ikkarim, the "Thirteen Fundamental Principles" of the Jewish faith, as derived from the Torah. Maimonides refers to these thirteen principles of faith as "the fundamental truths of our religion and its very foundations." The Thirteen Principles of Jewish faith (as recorded in Maimonides' introduction to Perek Chelek) are as follows:

1. Belief in the existence of the Creator, who is perfect in every manner of existence and is the Primary Cause of all that exists.

2. The belief in G‑d's absolute and unparalleled unity.

3. The belief in G‑d's non-corporeality, nor that He will be affected by any physical occurrences, such as movement, or rest, or dwelling.

4. The belief in G‑d's eternity.

5. The imperative to worship G‑d exclusively and no foreign false gods.

6. The belief that G‑d communicates with man through prophecy.

7. The belief in the primacy of the prophecy of Moses our teacher.

8. The belief in the divine origin of the Torah.

9. The belief in the immutability of the Torah.

10. The belief in G‑d's omniscience and providence.

11. The belief in divine reward and retribution.

12. The belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era.

13. The belief in the resurrection of the dead.

[aquila48]

“So you’re seriously proposing that someone can shoot up a school and kill a bunch of kids, and expect to be let off on constitutional grounds by claiming that shooting innocent kids is part of his religion?”

I’m not proposing anything, just reading the first amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...”

If you’re a strict constitutionalist, that phrase protects the FREE EXERCISE of religion, and if a religion has a rite that involves some type of human sacrifice, then the constitution literally protects that.

You might say that’s not what they meant, and I agree, but it is what they said. Of course that was written when, for all practical purposes, the only religions in the US were various branches of Christianity, and it probably never occurred to them that one day some “foreign” religion would come to these shores that called for the killing of blasphemy, the stoning of adultresses and honor killing.

I wonder how they would rephrase that amendment today.

How would you rephrase it?