This brief essay is bound to make no one happy. It is not meant to. Nor is it meant to place judgment on anyone's leaning regarding a very volatile political issue in American society. Rather, I'd like to take the effort to launch a serious conversation about abortion rights in America. Rarely does the Torah merely affirm one side of a contemporary partisan issue. While there may be a dominant leaning, there are centuries of diverse Jewish positions that need to be considered within the Jewish judicial and values systems.
In the case of abortion, Jewish law leans toward the modern pro-choice position, but also holds many powerful arguments for pro-life as well (I have used the terms that each side uses for itself, for fair balance).
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