ubiquitin,
Ah but medicine and halacha define danger to life veeeery diferently.
Oh? Is there a consistent definition?
This comes up in many situations eg fasting (There is raely a medical indication for a person to avoid fasting for a day with the exception of the elderly) Rabbonim allow eating much more commonly especialy among pregant women, recent surgery etc.
1. The allowances for eating on fast days other than Yom Kippur are much more lenient than danger to life. And even when talking about Yom Kippur, there’s a big difference between permitting fasting in measures and eating normally.
2. I once heard a non-Jewish OB state that she was aghast that a pregnant woman would ever fast, because it would throw the baby and possibly the mother into ketosis. So I respectfully disagree with what seems to be your assertion that the medical definition of danger is stricter than Judaism’s, or that there is any real consistent definition at all. Additionally, due to the potential for liability or malpractice lawsuits, if an abortion ban with danger exceptions were passed, I’d imagine that most medical practitioners/panels would set the danger bar pretty low.
if abortions where illegal unless the life of amother was at risk, and your physician or medical expert felt there was no risk, and a competent Rav felt the life was at risk (either medicaly or psychologicly). What good would going to the Rav be?
Again, it seems like a big assumption to me that the “medical” definition (or to be more accurate with what we’re discussing, legislative definition interpreted by medical practitioners) will be stricter than the halachic one, especially when our lawsuit happy society would engender a tendency to err on the side of caution.
What do you support?
Here’s the thing: most abortions in the US are done for economic reasons or due to fear of disruption to life. Crisis pregnancy centers know this, so a big part of what they do is to steer pregnant women towards Federal programs such as Medicaid and WIC, offer counseling, and assistance with adoption if desired.
This will blow gaskets among the Republicans here, but to really reduce the number of abortions, we need more programs geared towards helping pregnant women and new mothers. For starters, insurance should cover prenatal care, birth, postpartum care, and a year of infant care 100%. To lower costs, low-risk pregnancies should be handled by midwives outside of a hospital setting. Paid family leave for the birth of a child should be mandated. University health centers should provide prenatal care. And there should be benefits for businesses that provide family friendly benefits such as flexible schedules, sick leave, teleworking, etc. Cultural changes are also needed, though this cannot be mandated. Babies are blessings, not burdens, and this message should be reinforced.
If my taxes go up so that abortions become exceedingly rare, then I’m happy to pay.