Rabbi Joshua Sperka zt”l Rabbi at Congregation B’nai David, Detroit Michigan. Detroit Rabbi Joshua Sperka was one of the first anti-abortion activists to speak in the graphic terminology that has marked the movement during testimony on the abortion bills."We have experienced the impact of a society which,step by step, has betrayed humanity's essential reverence for the sacredness of human existence," he said during a Senate Judiciary committee meeting in 1967. "These words disguised the mass murder of a people. We are dealing with human life and the consequences of this proposal no man can foresee."
Rabbi Joshua Sperka's comments in 'We should be terrified': What Michigan women should know if abortion becomes illegal. Detroit Free Press
https://t.co/G4e6s6KbBq
Rabbi Bernard L. Berzon zt”l. President of the Rabbinical Council of America. "No woman was the “final arbiter about the disposition of her body and the embryonic human life flourishing therein. Doctors, too, must face up to the moral dilemma: whether they can play havoc with the basic worth and dignity of human life when they freely perform abortions. In Judaism, the life of an unborn child is sacred and only when It is a threat to the mother can the moral issue of abortion be resolved. For each person to decide arbitrarily, on the basis of economics or convenience, whether a fetus is to survive is literally for man to play God and is religiously blasphemous and socially destructive."
Rabbi Bernard L. Berzon's ccomments in 2 Top Orthodox Rabbis Score ‘Blanket’ Abortion Permission. NY Times.
https://t.co/Bg0EzXdS1K
Rabbi Joseph Karasick zt”l. President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. "To destroy a human embryo is sacrilegious interference with life itself and akin to murder. Only when there is actual and acute danger to the life of the mother does Jewish religious law permit termination of pregnancy,” he said. According the the rabbi, the Talmud asserts that “whoso sheds the blood of man within man his blood shall be shed.” This has been traditionally interpreted as constituting a commandment against the killing of unborn children."
https://t.co/Bg0EzXdS1K
Rav Elazar Shach zt”l. Dean of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. “The only relevant factor is prolonging life. Even if the quality of life will be reduced and there will be what appears to be unnecessary suffering, life is paramount. We find that our master, Moshe, asked to remain alive even. As a bird! What value can life as a bird have - he cannot fulfill mitzvah as a bird! Yet, one who knows that everything that HaShem created was created for His glory, and that each creature adds to the glory of Heaven in this world, knows the true value of each second of life, in whatever state! "
Rav Elazar Shach's comments on the gift of life.
https://t.co/v2ZtWVDKxp
Rabbi Chaim Dov Keller zt”l. Rosh Yeshiva of the Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago and Member of Agudath Israel of America. Rabbi Keller condemned the new abortion law in New York State. In an article entitled “The Unbridgeable Gap: A Torah Look at the American Reality” published in The Jewish Observer in May 1971, Rabbi Keller made this observation: "Then (it was just before Pesach) one of the legislators arose, and with tears in his eyes, in effect said: How can I sit at the Seder with my family knowing that my vote caused this measure to be defeated? He, therefore, in the name of all that Pesach stands for, changed his vote, which was the decisive one vote passage of the bill. In the State of New York, as of today, close to one hundred thousand human lives have been snuffed out before they had a chance to see the light of day, all in the name of Jewish liberalism."
https://t.co/CJOsRZnToj
“The Torah is compared to the sneh, the Burning Bush, because “fire gives heat, light and devours fuel, but the light of Torah must only give warmth and light, love and hope; it must never be used to destroy or kill. This is not Torah; it is a perversion of Torah.”
Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik referred to second-trimester abortion as shefichut damim and argued:"The third trimester is arbitrary. It is grounded in a desire to adjust HaKadosh Baruch Hu to one's capricious desires. It is paganism...They think that a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy, since she is before the third trimester, her right to liberty takes precedence over the fetus's right to life. That is moral values? That is paganism. That is the philosophy that motivates the mechashefim and the pagans."
Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik's comments in Should We Care If Non-Jews Abort Their Babies? The Jewish Press.
https://t.co/1p8sMSs6zD