ABORTION AND THE HALAKHIC CONVERSATION

Let us remember: there is no aspect of halakhah today that is not subject to dispute. Everyone can find authorities who support a particular position[emphasis added]... We must study the Talmudic sources in all seriousness, and after considering the commentators and codifiers, we must consider whether(a poseq) has sufficiently proven his conclusion.

Put differently, the specter of halakhic pluralism is haunting the rabbinic world. The texts and sources which are the building blocks of halakhic reasoning are malleable: legal scholars can combine them in a variety of ways so as to construct arguments in favor of more than one proposed answer to a legal question. These answers differ from and often openly contradict each other. And this is the phenomenon which is so troubling. How can the halakhah appear simultaneously to affirm both"X" and"not-X" as answers to the same question? In theory, halakhah might affirm a plurality of answers; both sides of a controversy may be"the words of the living God ." Still, even in the argument of the schools of Hillel and Shammai the authoritative practice had to be decided one way or the other.®® Whether as a matter of theology, logic, or common sense, many Jews believe that only one answer-"X" or"not-X"- can be correct. The Torah ought to speak with one voice, not 613.%° Particularly on a question as fateful as abortion, there must be such a thing as a unified halakhic truth, one right answer. And though our powers of textual reasoning are fallible and the source material is recalcitrant, a scientific method of halakhah, a structure of formal decision-making rules may yet lead us to salvation. This is what Arusi attempts to give us. His method, like those of Soloveitchik and Feinstein, is formal, artificial, and controversial. It is a conceptual straightjacket, a constraint imposed upon the process of halakhic thought from outside the context of that thought, an intellectual fence to prevent the posek from wandering into error, however "error" is defined. And it is quite likely indispensable if the goal is to determine the one right answer out of the cacophony of interpretations, rulings, discussion and debate that is the halakhic literature.