Re: abortions in Jewish law

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

The statement that "abortions are strictly illegal according to jewish law, 
unless the mother's life is in danger" is oversimplified and misleading, and 
not really correct as it stands.  Unless the mother's life is in danger--in 
which case (contrary to the Catholics) an abortion is *required*--abortions 
are certainly undesirable, and some or many poskim (rabbinic legal decisors) 
may rule most, or virtually all, such illegal.  But other poskim may, in 
light of all the relevant (emotional/psychological/other) circumstances, 
decide otherwise.  Like many (or most?) questions of Jewish law, this is not 
so simple, not so hard-and-fast, not so black-and-white. -- Robert Cohen


>From: Yehuda & Rebecca Poch <butrfly (at) actcom(dot)co(dot)il>
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: Re: pidyon haben
>Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2000 08:39:53 +0200
>
>At 04:58 04/02/2000 -0500, you wrote:
> >And abortions of a previous pregnancy (e.g., after 3 months)?
>
>Aside from the fact that abortions are strcitly illegal according to Jewish
>law, unless the mother's life is in danger, this would also invalidate a
>pidyon haben.
>
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>    ____ \/ ____                                          ____ \/ ____
>    \ o \||/ o /                                    \ o \||/ o /
>     \ ^ || ^ /       Yehuda and Rebecca Poch      \ ^ || ^ /
>      >--||--<       Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel             >--||--<
>     / v || v \         butrfly (at) actcom(dot)co(dot)il          / v || v \
>    /___/  \___\                                  /___/  \___\
>
>-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-
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>

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