2. Chaim Dovid Zweibel,"Combatting Abortion Distortion," The Jewish Observer 22(May, 1989), p. 7. Zweibel, Director of Government Affairs and General Counsel for Agudath Israel of America, authored that organization's amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 490 U.S. 490(1989). The brief argued that the Court should reverse its decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113(1973), which guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
3. Moshe D. Tendler ,"Contraception and Abortion," in Fred Rosner , ed., Medicine in Jewish Law, Northvale, NJ , 1990, pp. 117-118.
4. Zweibel , pp. 9-10, on the determination by Agudath Israel's Council of Torah Sages that Roe must be opposed in the name of k'vod Shomayim. See also the Postscript, p. 10, which stresses the unity of organized Orthodoxy over the abortion issue.
5. See A.S. Abraham, Nishmat Avraham, Jerusalem , 1987, Hoshen Mishpat 425, pp. 420-422: while"most rishonim and aharonim" hold that abortion is prohibited in the absence of danger to the mother,"a few of the authorities(ketsat mehaposqim)" regard the prohibition to be a lesser one, rabbinic(derabanan) rather than Toraitic(de’oraita) in nature.
6. The most extensive treatment by a liberal halakhist is that of David M. Feldman, Marital Relations, Birth Control , and Abortion in Jewish Law, New York , 1968, pp. 251ff. Feldman offers a summary of his position in his Health and Medicine in the Jewish Tradition, New York , 1986, pp. 79-90. See also Isaac Klein , 4 Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, New York , 1979, pp. 415-417. Reform writers include Solomon B. Freehof , in Walter Jacob (ed.) American Reform Responsa, New York , 1983, no. 171, Walter Jacob , Contemporary American Reform Responsa, New York , 1987, no. 16; Moshe Zemer , Halakhah Shefuyah, Tel Aviv , 1993, pp.280-282; and Mark Washofsky, in Barry S. Kogan, ed., A Time to Be Born and a Time to Die: The Ethics of Choice, New York , 1991, pp. 73-81.
7. See, for example, A. S. Abraham, Lev Avraham, Jerusalem , 1978, v. 2, p. 135, and Comprehensive Guide to Medical Halakhah, Jerusalem , 1990, p. 205; Fred Rosner , Modern Medicine and Jewish Ethics, Hoboken -New York , 1986, pp. 139-160(and especially 152 ff., where he argues that abortion is "moral murder") and Practical Medical Halakhah, New York , 1980, pp. 35-36; J. David Bleich , Judaism and Healing: Halakhic Perspectives, New York , 1981, pp. 96-103, and"Abortion in Halakhic Literature," in Fred Rosner and J. David Bleich , eds., Jewish Bioethics, New York , 1979, pp. 134-177; and Immanuel Jakobovits ,"Jewish Views on Abortion," in Rosner and Bleich , pp. 118-133
9. Some tentative steps toward an analysis of the function of the halakhic consensus within the
rabbinic legal process are taken in Mark Washofsky,"The Search for a Liberal Halakhah: A Progress Report," in Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer , eds., Dynamic Jewish Law, Tel Aviv and Pittsburgh , 1991, pp. 25-51.