Whose religious freedom is at stake with Texas’s new abortion law?
Some rabbis are claiming that SB 8 violates the obligations of their faith.
This summer the Texas legislature banned abortions after six weeks of gestation or at the moment when a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus. In order to evade judicial review, this law provides for enforcement not by any government entity but by the public, who have the option to sue any person or organization that they suspect of helping a woman have an abortion after six weeks. The law took effect last month after the Supreme Court declined to block it.
Some of the more surprising objections to SB 8 have come from rabbis who claim that the law violates their freedom of religion. Jewish law, they argue, not only allows for abortion after six weeks but in some cases requires it. Furthermore, Jews are required to offer their neighbors aid—yet the new law prohibits them from offering aid to a woman seeking an abortion.
These rabbis argue that SB 8 is based on an explicitly and exclusively Christian understanding of personhood. Texas governor Greg Abbott referred to this view in his remarks at the bill’s signing: “Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion.”
