Rabbis launch effort to override Clinton's veto of partial-birth ban

As pro-lifers prepared to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 22, a new group was organizing dozens of rabbis to join in the effort to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on partial-birth abortion.

"Last time, nine out of the ten Jewish senators voted with President Clinton on partial-birth abortion," said Chris Gersten, who is president of the ecumenical Institute for Religious Values and is leading the effort. Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) was the exception.

So far, Gersten has rallied 40 rabbis to sign a letter to U.S. senators stating their opposition to partial-birth abortion. "[A]ccording to Jewish law," says the letter, "once the head of the baby emerges, or the majority of the baby's body emerges, the child is considered a person equal to the mother and cannot be aborted, even to save the mother's life." But the letter has no quarrel with "the language in the current legislation which specifically allows the procedure when needed to save the life of the mother."

"We strongly urge you to protect some of the most vulnerable members of our society by voting to overturn the President's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 1997," say the rabbis. "We recall the words of Moses: 'I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live' (Deu. 30:19)."

Though many of the rabbis who have signed the letter are Orthodox (long a bastion of Jewish pro-life sentiment-including such social conservative leaders as Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition and Rabbi Mayer Schiller of Yeshiva University High School-some are not.

Pro-life Reform Rabbi Marc Gellman is a signatory, as is Conservative Rabbi Moses Birnbaum of New York City. Birnbaum emphasized in an interview that he does not necessarily advocate more general restrictions on abortion, but said, "One thing I can say categorically . . partial-birth abortion is absolutely wrong. The dilation and extraction method of aborting is tantamount to infanticide."

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 23, 1998
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