Aborting the Randomly Religious

The Supreme Court's decision to allow for the banning of abortion -- or limiting it to just the first couple of weeks of a pregnancy -- reflects a very limited Christian view of the issue.  First, not all Christians in this country agree with the decision:  18% of Jehovah's Witnesses, 27% of Mormons, 33% of Evangelicals, 48% of Catholics, 52% of Black Protestants, and 60% of "mainline" Protestants believe that abortion should be legal in most, if not all, cases.  Second, the bans might actually be a violation of the 1st Amendment's Free Exercise clause in that a reading of the Talmud and the Quran shows that there is a religious basis for allowing, if not requiring in some cases, for abortion. 

Under Judaic tradition, for the first 40 days of a pregnancy, the fetus is considered to be a 'fluid' and, more importantly, for the entirety of the pregnancy, the fetus is considered to be part of the mother and not seen has having 'personhood' until birth.  The Jewish Mishnah teaches that when the pregnancy endangers the mother's life, even at the point of labor, then the choice must be to save the mother even if that causes the death of the fetus -- up to the point of the baby's head being visible outside of the mother.  When the pro-life (or as some have put it 'forced-birth') politicians quote the Old Testament, such as Psalms 139, rabbis tend to get irritated:  “It makes me apoplectic. Most of the proof texts that they’re bringing in for this are ridiculous. They’re using my sacred text to justify taking away my rights in a way that is just so calculated and craven” (Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg).  As the Torah (Exodus) makes explicit, there's no penalty for causing a woman to miscarry beyond a monetary payment; no "eye for an eye", because the fetus does not yet contain a nefesh (soul).  This may be the reason why 83% of Jews in this country support the pro-choice position.  

Then there's the Muslim tradition.  Most (55%) Muslims in America state that abortion should be legal, yet a lot of them are not very vocal because theirs is more along the lines of the original ruling of Roe v. Wade (1973), in that it's not an absolute right.  Some Islamic scholars in the US point the Quran and the hadithes, which state that for the first 40 days, the fetus is merely a nutfah, that the angels have not yet caused the 'ensoulment' of the child.  The Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) Council of North America has stated that abortion could be allowed up to the 120th day of the pregnancy, stating that before that time it is a life and should be given the same respect as we give to any life on earth, but after that it is a human and thus should be held at higher regard.   Daisy Khan, a Muslim activist working in Afghanistan pointed out that the anti-abortion laws being passed in the US make them more strict that then ones being passed by the Taliban. She makes an excellent point: “We cannot preach women’s rights to other countries when we are stepping back the rights [American] women have to control their own reproduction.”