SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

in which a choice is final, the principle remains that one life is as precious as another. This principle that we do not destroy one life in order to save another is further exemplified in a discussion in Pesahim 25b. A man comes before Rava and says:"The governor of my city has given me the alternative that either I should kill so-and-so or the governor will kill me. What shall I do? Rava answered him:"Be killed rather than kill. What makes you think that your blood is redder than his?"

This Talmudic phrase,"Your blood is redder than his," was used in rather a reverse sense in the latest volume of Eliezer Waldenberg , Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 9, 45, Jerusalem , 1967. In this volume, devoted to a large extent to modern medical questions, the author concludes that a person is certainly not required by law to donate an organ of his body in order that it may be planted into the body of another. If he is endangered by the removal of the organ, then he is actually forbidden to risk his life. Of course, if the danger to him were minimal and the benefit to the recipient were maximal, it would be a good deed; but, otherwise, one

should not endanger his life in this way because one life- in this case his own- is as valuable as the life he wishes to save. Waldenberg then uses the Talmudic dictum cited above:"What makes you think(that his blood is redder than yours)?" But whichever way the phrase is taken, its Teaing is clear enough: Every life is as equally valuable as any other ife.

The two instances- that of the infant and that of the man ordered to become a murderer- both differ from the case inquired about here because these two cases involve actually taking steps to put people to death, while the case of the clinic involves merely allowing dying people t die. Nevertheless, in spite of this difference, this much at least 1s relevant: we have no right to say that one person’s life is more important than that of the other- the mother’s or the child’s, or the man’s or his Intended victim’s. From the standpoint of religion, all people are alike In status as to the right to life.