3 Jewish women file lawsuit against Kentucky abortion law

[In It to Win It]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Three Jewish women are suing against Kentucky’s abortion law for the first time publicly.

They claim it violates their religious freedom and puts their lives in Jeopardy.

The suit, filed on behalf of Lisa Sobel, Jessica Kalb and Sarah Baron was filed against Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Jefferson County Commonwealth Attorney Thomas Wine.

The plaintiffs said Kentucky’s abortion laws puts them in a legal “gray area”. They said the abortion laws prevents them from “having children, endangers their lives and could possibly put them in prison.”

The press conference was held at Louisville Urban League Thursday.

She said it took her and her husband five years to conceive their only daughter. Sobel said she and her husband suffer from medical conditions. The only way they could get pregnant was through in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a medical procedure where an egg is combined with sperm in a test tube or outside the body.

Sobel said she still had a tumultuous and terrifying pregnancy; and credits the medical care she received with saving her life during birth.

”I asked God not to take me from my husband and my child. I didn’t want to die,” Plaintiff Lisa Sobel said. “And then the last thing I heard was my doctor saying get her under, we are losing her.” What I remember most from those moments was turning to my dula and saying I need you to stay with my husband and my child. They are going to need you if I don’t make It.”

https://www.wymt.com/2022/10/06/three-jewish-women-file-lawsuit-against-kentucky-abortion-law/

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Jewish Leaders: Banning Abortion is 'Absolutely' a Violation of Religious Freedom

Under Jewish religious law, it is clear that life begins at birth and there is no prohibition in the Torah on abortion. According to my Rabbi, the life of a fetus is only potential life and the life of the mother is more important than the life of a fetus. Alito's proposed opinion elevates Christian beliefs over Judaism.

Link to tweet

https://jezebel.com/jewish-leaders-banning-abortion-is-absolutely-a-violat-1848885645

Conservatives—namely, white evangelical Christians—have long weaponized religious values as a shoddy defense for their decades-long conquest to criminalize abortion in the United States. But after a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade sent shockwaves through the public consciousness on Monday night, a different kind of group of religious text-swinging heroes has emerged.

Coalitions of Rabbis across different sects of Judaism and a contingent of Jewish abortion activists are defending Jewish pregnant people’s right to abortion access, raising what they claim is a valid legal challenge: A national abortion ban would violate their right to religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. And as the right to bodily autonomy for women and pregnant people is threatened—largely impacting low-income Black and brown people—by conservative justices’ arguments that we should simply rewind to the good old years when women didn’t have any rights because, you know, some 17th century witch-hunter said so, Jewish communities are putting their foot down to say, “Not in my religion.”......

For evidence, Rabbi Ruttenberg points to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, which discusses a case where two men accidentally knock over a pregnant person and cause them to miscarry:

“When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other harm ensues, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman’s husband demands compensation; the payment will be determined by judges. But if other harm ensues, the penalty shall be life for life.”

The Hebrew Bible, she says, does not regard the fetus as a person, for the Torah doesn’t specify how long the woman has been pregnant when the miscarriage happens. Another annotated text states, “If she is found pregnant, until the fortieth day it is mere fluid,” meaning the fetus does not have agency for at least forty days of pregnancy. For that reason, some interpretations of Jewish law say that personhood begins with the first breath. “It’s not murder, basically, and the Talmud lays that out really explicitly,” she says.

I like the idea of a lawsuit filed on the basis of the First Amendment. Alito's draft opinion favors conservative christian theology over the faith all all or most Jews.