Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Zeev Hed]

I think that condoning slavery and the question of abortion are quite different. The bible does not "condone" slavery based on race, as far as I know. Yes there are somewhat different treatment of Israelite slaves and "foreign slaves" (the laws of freeing is slaves differ a little). I think the bible "accepts" slavery grudgingly as a pest of the times yet, for the first time, the codex actually start and gran slaves rights they did not have before. Evolution of human morality takes time.

The question of "when life starts" had practical reasoning long before abortion was in "vogue" and long before abortion was "dressed up" as a "pro choice" vs "pro life" issue.. The Talmud had to address this issue because too often the question of who's life should be saved, the mother's or the unborn baby, arose. Letting the mother die would be a cardinal sin (one of the three sins which a Jew shall not transgress even if his own life was threatened), not "allowing" the unborn baby to start living is also a sin, but a sin on a much lesser level (I don't think it rises to the level of "Toeva" or abomination like homosexuality). I realize that very "graphic" horror pictures of "killing" the unborn are emotionally moving, just as the miserable treatment of slaves is, just as the death of living children from the like of HIV or even malaria is. Everything that is being done to prevent the latter two should be done to prevent abortion, all three are witnesses of the miserable human condition, but an existing human life (and my son, the full fledged vegetarian would say "any life", not just human, even though the bible on which he was raised says, these animals thou shall eat the others are "abomination"), is still holier than a potential life.

If a supreme court were to decide that an unborn baby is alive and its potential is greater than its mother and if a choice must be made, the unborn baby should be saved, and the living mother let die, I think such a decision if enforced, for instance, on Jews, would violate the separation between the state and the church since it would be in diametric opposition to the "Halacha", or what is orthodox religious law.

Zeev