Selected Reform Responsa

to the mother. But even if we should understand the baraita to indicate that the other teachers differed with R. Meir in all three cases, it would still only follow, as Lurya correctly points out, that in all three cases we decide the Halacha according to the Chachamim and do not make it obligatory upon these three women to take the precaution of using contraceptives; the rule indicated by the baraita would still teach us that, according to the opinion of all the teachers, it is not forbidden tce use a contraceptive in cases where conception would bring harm either to the mother or to the child born or unborn. And I cannot see any difference between the protection of a minor from a conception which might prove fatal to her and the protection of a grown-up woman whose health is, according to the opinion of physicians, such that a pregnancy might be fatal to her. Neither can I see any difference between protecting a child from the danger of being deprived of the nourishment of its mother’s milk, and protecting the already born children of the family from the harm which might come to them due to the competition of a larger number of sisters and brothers. For the care and the comfort which the parents can give their children already born will certainly be less if there be added to the family other children claiming attention, care, and comfort.

The Talmudic law even permits a woman to sterilize herself permanently(Ha-isha rasha-it lishtot kos shel ikarin, Tosefta, Yevamot VIII.4). And the wife of the famous R. Hiyya is reported to have taken such a medicine(sama de-akarta') which made her sterile (Yevamot 65b). Whether there be such a drug according to modern medicine or not, is not our concern. The Rabbis believed that there was such a drug which, if taken internally, makes a person sterile(see Shabbat 110a.b and Preuss, Op. cit., pp. 439-440 and 479-480), and they permitted the woman to take it and become sterile. According to Lurya(op. cit., Yevamot IV.44), this permission is given to a woman who experiences great pain of childbirth, which she wishes to escape, as was the case of the wife of R. Hiyya. Even mote so, says Lurya, is this permitted to a woman whose children are morally corrupt and of