Jack, So far, the only concern raised is that a suicidal person might kill herself rather than bear the innocent child of a criminal. Some poskim call that pikuach nefesh. The other side is that suicide is a capital offense and that normally speaking, we don’t sit shiva for such a person. We’re essentially advocating the mother commit murder of her child to stop her from commiting murder on herself. I admit that this is a machlokes, and that while the 2nd opinion rings true for me, i can respect those who disagree.
What i do not admit to is the way you chose that one line; he was not being medayak in his choice of words, because the plain meaning is nomesorah’s splitting of torah from politics, which you are agreeing is not the case. We both agree that rabbi breitowitz was speaking about halacha above everything, not that your political views can be independent of halacha, but that in order to protect halacha, *there are those that say*, as he ends off with, that we shouldn’t oppose roe v wade because it’s possible to run into a situation where secular law will prohibit us from keeping halacha.
Ujm’s argument is strong; whicu halachos are we concerned with? He makes us question our negius – are we worried about the suicidal mother(which is extremely rare – less than 1% of abortions are due to rape or incest even by goyim, certainly in the frum world where such things are rarer..) more than, say, haba bemachtere? Or is there a negius involved.
I’d argue the other way, that not opposing it opens the door to the pro abortion extremists permitting the killing of babies after delivery. Are we not to be concerned with a Jewish mother with severe post partum depression having regret and wanting to “abort” when her baby is delivered? I honestly think that’s a more realistic concern and would happen more frequently than the suicidal mother.