ABORTION AND THE HALAKHIC CONVERSATION

According to this description, the halakhic permit for abortion is far too limited to accommodate a woman's legal"right" to that procedure. Thus, orthodox organizations back the"pro-life" cause as the only legitimate Jewish point of view."

Liberal halakhic scholars, to be sure, have criticized this description as excessively narrow. Abortion, they point out, is not defined as"murder" under Jewish law: if it is indeed a prohibited act, the prohibition does not fall under the rubric of"killing."$ They have sought to demonstrate that a persuasive Jewish legal case can be made for a more lenient and nuanced stance on the abortion issue. As usual, however, the writings of liberal halakhists have had no measurable effect upon the orthodox position, which remains firmly and severely restrictive.

Tendler's summary of the Jewish law on abortion is a good example of what we can call the"halakhic consensus." A"consensus" position exists in halakhah when, despite the availability of other plausible interpretations of the sources, it is the view of the law held by a preponderance of orthodox authorities. A consensus ruling will often appear in halakhic literature as"the" halakhah on a given issue. If dissenting views are mentioned, they are presented as divergent, less"correct", not to be relied upon as authoritative statements of the law. Thus, compendia on Jewish medical ethics tend to present the restrictive position described by Tendler as the one and only correct answer to the question:"when and under what circumstances does Jewish law permit abortion?" More lenient views are treated as deviations from the mainstream, the consensus.” The existence of this consensus view is of enormous significance, because it determines how the general public will ultimately perceive the stance of the halakhah on an issue of great moment. It nourishes the"pro-life" activism of orthodox organizations. It permits the Israeli Chief Rabbinate to declare the performance of an abortion to be an act of murder.® And it allows orthodox spokesmen to contend that, contra Brickner and the liberal halakhists, the opinion of the orthodox rabbinate is the sole authorized expression of the Jewish law on abortion.