Friday, January 7, 2022
Where does Reform Judaism stand on the question of reproductive choice, including the legality of abortion? Materials in the Klau Library from the 1970s through today demonstrate that Reform Jewish institutions in America were early promoters of public statements supporting reproductive choice and legal abortion, and continue with their support through the present day.
In 1967, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), Union of American Hebrew Congregation (UAHC), now the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, now Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), and other Reform Jewish organizations joined an interfaith coalition to advocate for abortion rights called the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, now the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). In addition to political advocacy, these organizations support individual clergy, educate about religion and reproductive choice, and provide information in response to claims against reproductive choice.
In 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion was challenged as soon as it was ruled. The RCRC has remained steadfast in its support and advocacy for reproductive choice. For example, it joined many other faith organizations in the March for Women’s Lives in 2004 with the slogan “Pro-faith, pro-family, pro-choice.”
The RCRC has also published voter guides on reproductive choice, exhorting both dominant political parties to change their policies.
In addition to political advocacy, Reform rabbis have created rituals and liturgy to support women undergoing abortions.
The URJ adopted resolutions in support of abortion rights and access in 1967, 1975, 1981, and 1990. The CCAR and WRJ adopted resolutions in 1967, 1975, and 2017. (See this link, [WC1] [WC1] for a summary of resolutions on this topic.) The HUC-JIR Klau Library in Cincinnati holds an important collection of documents from the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. It contains statements from organizations that represent many religions, including UAHC, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the American Jewish Congress (AJC), and various Christian organizations.
The religious debate about when life begins uses the onset of fetus viability to define the beginning of “life,” and thus the point at which the state can intervene in an individual’s decision to continue or to terminate a pregnancy. The RCRC’s position in support of reproductive choice does not engage with the question of when life begins; it instead bases its argument on freedom of religion and separation of Church and State.
Reform institutions have continued to publicly support reproductive choice, most recently in response to 2021’s two court challenges to pre-viability abortion bans: Texas’s 6-week abortion ban (Texas S.B. 8) and Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). On December 1, 2021, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) rallied for reproductive rights along with the WRJ, NCJW, and many other religious, medical, and secular organizations.
Roe v. Wade has stood since 1973. Upholding the challenged laws would return to individual states’ authority over the legality of abortion. The Center for Reproductive Rights project illustrates state by state the likely impact on abortion rights if these challenges to Roe v. Wade were successful.
Responses to anti-abortion rhetoric comprise the majority of the material in the Library’s collection. If not for the dates on these documents (1970s to 1990s), a reader might think they were published in 2021. Contemporary responses from Reform leaders and organizations echo the statements of their founders and emphatically affirm support for reproductive rights for all. The following poem, published in Illuminata: Newsletter for the Clergy for Choice Network (Summer 2000) looks back and forward.
Motherlode, Motherlore
discovered photograph, circa 1900
By Kathleen George Kearney
you hid the abortion well,
just like the old woman with the cracked
jar of lye
and the hot sterile instrucment
told you
you should.
you didn’t scream, like your oldest cousin
told you
she did
when her married boyfriend drove her
over the state line
to the doctor who had his little boy
holding the lantern
and running the bucket out back to dump
out by the hog’s trough
you didn’t tell your mother
and you didn’t go into a pale shock,
and you didn’t bleed to death
right then and there,
leaving the old woman with an empty
shot glass
and an amazed expression
on her tired face.
you tucked away the momentary agony
which released you,
the liberating gulp of whiskey she
insisted
you have,
the instrument of salvation
you pray each day in your mind
never to see
(it was just a knitting needle held over a
hot stove).
and you didn’t run to the police
and you didn’t go to the county hospital
and tell a story about how
you fell down the stairs
and you didn’t know you were carrying
and please don’t’ tell your husband,
because he’d be devastated
you certainly didn’t tell your pastor at
the Sunday picnic,
or the pastor’s wife,
when she asked why you weren’t
eating
you didn’t let the timbermen
find you floating like a sad leaf in the
creek
north of the saw mill,
like they did the Lawrence girl
when she was just fifteen.
and you didn’t try to stop the bleeding
with the concoctions the Dakota midwife
once told your sister would do the trick:
with pennyroyal and oak leaves,
some green wood from a willow,
a little stolen quinine.
you hid the abortion well.
you took your place beside the husband,
on evening walks,
at mumming
pianos,
slipped in the bed and created a diversion,
hid the new slope of your belly,
the clots you didn’t pass.
you hid the septic womb,
where your dreaming hope cried and listed like a boat on a storm.
and when you died,
the doctor and the husband hid the cause,
the doctor telling the mortician it was a
bad miscarriage,
the husband telling the cihldren you
went to god
because you loved them just so much.
after the funeral,
your first girl hid the picture
taken at the end of summer,
when there was nothing yet to hide.
the girl stows it underneath her pillow,
to weep into at night,
a witness to the days before the abortion,
when the baby son wore his pants short,
and the second daughter turned her face
away,
proud and gorgeous,
the first daughter
(the one you named after your beloved
great-aunt)
is the one who smiles freely,
never imagining
it can end this way:
a mother will explode into scarlet
and be lost forever,
destiny hangs on the edge of a shot of
whiskey
and freedom is bittersweet,
the autumn comes with a crisp slice of
darkness,
and abortions get hidden
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