The Health of the Mother
Mishpatim, 5784
I want to tell you a personal story. In April of 2022, I asked Naima, then my fiancée, what she thought of his job offers, impacting where we would move right after they got married. On one hand, there was a lovely small congregation that was in need of a solo rabbi, a place with a young president and a lot of potential to try to make a fresh start. On the other hand, there was a slightly smaller shul with a cantor, a little bit more uptight, not as much my speed. There was an upside to that shul: it was in New York, on Long Island, close to my ill mother. The other synagogue, the one I liked more, was in Savannah, Georgia. Naima pointed out to me that I should go where I felt more comfortable, and that with the airport in Savannah, it wouldn’t be hard to see my family. I responded to her by noting that we had said we would not move to a state with a restrictive abortion law. She acknowledged that, but then reminded me that in 2019, Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional, so abortion access was possible in Georgia. That settled it. We agreed to move to Savannah.
In June, 2022, one month after I signed a contract, nine days before we were married, and one month before we moved, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Roe v Wade was unconstitutional. 5 months later, in November, the Geogia Supreme Court now ruled that the earlier law was constitutional. All abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy at the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which, seeing as pregnancy is counted from the last period, is 3-4 weeks after the mother has conceived and two weeks from the earliest point she could know she was pregnant, were now banned in the state of Georgia.
In August of 2023, Naima got pregnant. We were ecstatic. We could not be more excited. We were ready to start a family. At slightly past 6 weeks of pregnancy, so just 2 weeks after they found out, Naima began bleeding. We were nervous, and went to a midwife for an ultrasound. The ultrasound detected cardiac activity, but it was slow, irregular. The embryo was growing larger and smaller. The attending physician told us that what were seeing was contractions, their child dying, and that Naima was undergoing a miscarriage. There was nothing we could do. She told us to wait and let Naima bleed it out, and that to be on guard against her bleeding too much, which would mean she would have to go to the ER. We also had to be on guard against not enough bleeding, which would mean the miscarriage was not properly taking place. If that happened…we would have to cross that bridge. What she did not offer us, what she could not offer them since it was now illegal, was a D&C, or any medication or procedure to ensure that the miscarriage was safe. Naima bled our future child out over the course of a week. And all I could do was watch.
The story keeps going. In October of 2023, Naima got pregnant again. This time we waited with more trepidation. Some early scares set our teeth on edge. Naima insisted on having contact with a physician or midwife in New Jersey in case something went wrong. A 12-week genetic test that showed no signs of any genetic abnormalities allowed us to breathe. Still, I am nervous about the upcoming anatomy scan at 20 weeks. I am sure it will be alright. And I don’t know what we will do if it is not.
Neither Naima or I wanted for her to have an abortion. We both want children. And yet, Georgia’s law means that Naima could not get care that she might have needed or wanted in our attempt to have children. If those court decisions had come out even half a year earlier, I would never even have applied for this job. Not because of Agudath Achim. But because I would have felt that Georgia was not a safe place to try to get pregnant.
This week is Repro Shabbat, run by the National Council of Jewish Women. Why this week? Because we read in the parsha this week the following lines: וְכִי־יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים וְנָגְפוּ אִשָּׁה הָרָה וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ וְלֹא יִהְיֶה אָסוֹן עָנוֹשׁ יֵעָנֵשׁ כַּאֲשֶׁר יָשִׁית עָלָיו בַּעַל הָאִשָּׁה וְנָתַן בִּפְלִלִים “When two men fight, and one pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage occurs, he shall be fined according as the women’s husband may exact, to be based on reckoning.” Why is this line important for abortion? It is as close we can get in the Torah to a ruling on the modern medical procedure. Based on the fact that a man who causes a miscarriage is not liable for the death penalty, as he would be for murder or manslaughter, but for monetary payment as he would any other bodily injury, the rabbis of the Talmud understand that a fetus is not a human being, but part of the mother’s body, like a thigh. I gave a full version of this lesson in my weekly ethics class, but the short version of it goes that Judaism does not think about abortion on the basis of bodily autonomy, since classic Jewish law does not believe in full bodily autonomy for anyone, but on the basis of health. For the health of the mother, whether that be physical, emotional, financial, or so forth, an abortion is permitted.
The health of the mother is paramount. The health of the mother. And right now, in Georgia, that is simply not true. Naima was given no other option but to simply bleed and bleed, and she could have ended up in the emergency room. Rather than have a simple procedure to help with the miscarriage if that was what she needed to process our loss, she had to slowly lose our future child over the course of the week. Never have I felt so unclean, she told me.
That is just one story here in Georgia, one with a simple ending. Imagine what thousands or tens of thousands other stories are like here, of mothers who find out their child has a disability incompatible with life, who have been raped, who lose their job and then can’t afford to give birth to the child they are carrying, who already have four kids and cannot be mother to a fifth. Maybe they wanted children, and maybe they didn’t. But the abortion ban we have here in Georgia gives no thought to their health. And that, according to Judaism, is the most important part of the conversation about abortion. The health of the mother.
Last year, the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards published a unanimous document on their position on abortion. They wrote “The worldwide Conservative Masorti Movement actively supports efforts to protect women’s reproductive health and access to safe and legal abortion when necessary. We do so from the perspective of a community that believes in our responsibility to protect the lives and health of ourselves and others. We also do so as a religious minority seeking the freedom to follow our religious dictates and conscience.” Right now, those protections do not exist.
Our challenge, as Conservative Jews, is to help make abortion safe and legal, for the health of the mother. There are numerous ways we can help. You could make a donation to the National Council of Jewish Women’s Abortion Fund. You can call your state representatives and tell them to pass a law repealing the abortion ban. This is not about politics or party. This is about health.
I’m grateful that Naima and I were able to move to Savannah. But I’m terrified of Naima going through pregnancy here. This shouldn’t be the case. Women all over the state, all over the country, deserve to know that their health comes first.
