Posted on 06/28/2022 6:52:09 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A lawsuit filed on June 10 by a synagogue in Florida has challenged plans to limit abortions in the state on the grounds that it would violate religious rights and therefore be unconstitutional. The Jewish faith holds the right to an abortion to be inviolable.
The Florida bill is set to lower the maximum threshold for abortions from 24 weeks down to 15 weeks from July 1, with exceptions in instances where the medical procedure could save the life or prevent serious injury to the mother. It offers no exceptions for victims of incest, rape or human trafficking.
But these restrictions would infringe upon Jewish women’s right to abortion as guaranteed by their faith and are thus incompatible with the Florida constitution’s right to privacy and religious freedom, says the lawsuit, which was brought by Rabbi Barry Silver on behalf of the roughly 150 members of Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor in Palm Beach County.
“If a foetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law not only entitles but requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself,” the suit argues.
Broadly speaking, Jewish law stipulates that life begins at birth and that until that point the mother’s life is prioritised. “So, in order to protect the health of the pregnant person, abortion is permissible and sometimes mandated,” said Samira Mehta, associate professor of women and gender as well as Jewish studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The definition of what counts as a health threat varies between Jewish communities, with the congregation of L’Dor Va-Dor in Florida at the liberal end of the spectrum. But, Mehta said, there is agreement on the principle that abortion is a right.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
The American Jew and the Jews of the rest of the world are two completely different things.
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.
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.
“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?
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