How many people go to People to inform their views on abortion rights in Orthodox Judaism?
Exactly zero, one would think. And yet, this week, the celebrity gossip magazine (to which I used to subscribe for apolitical content) published an essay by a New York City woman who wrote about her decision to abort a pregnancy at 31 weeks in Colorado — supposedly with the “blessing” of her rabbi.
From a Jewish perspective, the piece was exceedingly lacking in details, starting with the identity of the woman and the “prominent” rabbi she consulted. On what basis did he grant her permission to abort? On the subject of abortion, Jewish law is extremely complicated (as it is in most circumstances), and the information provided in the piece was wholly insufficient to make a judgment about the permissibility of her decision according to leading rabbinic figures.
What was the long-term prognosis of the baby (who had experienced seizures in utero), and what was the physical and emotional state of the mother? In Jewish law, abortion is permissible if the life (and that includes the emotional stability) of the mother is in question. There are a lot of unanswered questions in the People piece, which is one personal example — not a final determination on the permissibility of abortions. Every case is unique, and one cannot extrapolate from one woman’s story the whole of Jewish law on the subject. But that’s exactly what the essay set out to do.
The People essay wasn’t an honest rendering of a prickly issue in a faith as legalistic as Orthodox Judaism but was rather another effort at propagandizing the reality behind third-trimester abortions.
Abortion activists would have you believe that all third-trimester abortions are performed on women such as the one writing for People: women who are faced with a last-minute health crisis on the part of the mother, the baby, or both and who have made a determination based on what they believe is best for all parties. These pro-choice advocates want you to believe that women are always virtuous and would never make a decision to terminate a viable baby unless absolutely necessary.
The reality is, of course, more complicated — and not quite the story abortion advocates want told.
According to the Planned Parenthood-affiliated Guttmacher Institute, “Most women seeking later abortion fit at least one of five profiles: They were raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, were in conflict with a male partner or experiencing domestic violence, had trouble deciding and then had access problems, or were young and nulliparous.”
That is to say: There isn’t a great deal of difference between women seeking a third-trimester abortion and women seeking a first-trimester abortion. Most don’t have a special justification for waiting as long as they have: They simply come to the conclusion that they do not want to have a baby later or weren’t able to obtain an abortion earlier due to financial or logistical issues.
In another study, Guttmacher reported that 11% of abortions occur in the second trimester and another 1% in the third, stating, “Fifty-eight percent of abortion patients in a 2004 survey reported that they would have preferred to have obtained their abortion earlier than they did.”
Abortion advocates insist that because of this, women must have access to abortion at any point in a pregnancy. Arguments such as the one advanced in this People essay try in vain to portray women seeking to abort babies in their third trimester as sympathetic figures.
The public isn’t buying it. In 2018, Gallup reported on its abortion polling data:
Abortion advocates realize that their best chance to convince voters is by playing the fetal abnormalities card. While only 13% of people support abortion in the third trimester, that number more than doubled to 29% when Down Syndrome is detected, according to Gallup.
The People essay is just another example of the liberal media trying to whitewash all late-term abortions as if they’re always medically necessary or in response to fetal abnormalities, even though the facts don’t support this narrative. It’s yet another anecdotal experience put forth by abortion advocates to paint anyone against late-term abortion as an enemy of women’s health and portray women who obtain third-term abortions, not their babies, as the real victims.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother of four and freelance writer. She is an editor at Ricochet.com, a columnist at the Forward, and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
