Just in case any of my fellow lizards are interested I thought I would explain the Jewish view on the abortion issue.

First off, I should be careful about what I mean byt “the Jewish view.” I mean the halachic (as in traditional Jewish law) view. Reform and Conservative Jews tend to be pretty pro-chioce and those that aren’t pro-choice feel that way for their own personal convictions.

In general, all things have a caveat.

The first thing to mention is that for a number of reasons, Tradition is that the soul attaches to a baby at the age of 40 days. Before that mark, abortion is not seen as a nothing, but it in a much less grey area as to permissability. There are those who would push that back a little and say the threshold is when the fetus has a heartbeat for other halachic reasons (specifically that a person’s death is traditionally defined as the heart is not beating and won’t come back, though that has been extended to brain death). In either case, we are talking about something early to midway in the first trimester.

After 40 days, or heartbeat, abortion is frowned upon but permissable in the case that the baby is threatening the life of the mother. This is learned from the verse that says if you see one person pursuing the life of another, you must stop the pursuer even unto the point of lethal force. In the case of a medical emergency, the baby is seen (legally) as pursuing the life of the mother.

The mother can not say “let me die” because suicide is forbidden. Though, she could refuse treatment.

Now, this itself is a grey zone. Different rabbis will look at “pursuing the life of the mother” in either a very broad or a very narrow scope. Some would only put it in terms of an immediately life threatening situation. Many would extend the principle to rape, the idea being that being forced to carry a rapist’s baby might threaten the mental and spiritual “life” of the mother. Others would extend the idea even further to include family hardships and other considerations, but no rabbi in the observant world would say “sure fine, whenever she feels like it is OK” after the threshold is passed.

Now as a final part, if there is a difficult labor that threatens the mother (which with modern medicine and ceasarian section) is less likely, and the baby is coming into the world and any bit of him or her is “poking out” the question becomes, who is pursuing whom? At that point, you can not kill the baby intentionally to save the mother.

Anyway, I thought I would weigh in on that in case anyone was curious.