The Torah of Reproductive Freedom
The Jewish Case for Abortion Justice
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It's been a few years since Roe fell, and things are bad. This is important to understand before we get into this post.
The excellent folks at the Guttmacher institute summarized the situation in the summer of 2025:
Currently, 13 states have total abortion bans and 28 additional states ban abortion somewhere between 6 weeks gestation and âviability,â ... At least 38 bills have been introduced across 24 states this year that include embryonic or fetal personhood language. These bills seek to grant an embryo or fetus the full legal rights of a person. The bills are part of a broader strategy to prevent the reestablishment of a constitutional right to abortion.... These bills seek to implicate [that is, criminalize] pregnancy outcomes such as abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth under criminal and civil laws such as child abuse, homicide, and wrongful death claims.
Ten of these bills explicitly include language that could be used to criminally charge people for their pregnancy outcomes. For example, Montana introduced a bill creating the crime of âabortion traffickingâ that could be used to prosecute anyone who helps a pregnant person travel for abortion care, and specifically names that a pregnant person could be charged under the new crime.
....During its first 100 days, the Trump administration limited enforcement of ...a federal law intended to protect patients and providers from violence at abortion clinicsâand pardoned 23 people convicted under the act....The Trump administration also [has been] ... rescinding guidance reaffirming that access to emergency abortion care is required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The federal administration has also withheld much of the funding for Title X, a program that provides vital reproductive health care services to people with lower incomes, a move that is estimated to impact up to 30% of Title X patients.
Their summary continues:
From 2019 to 2023, maternal mortality fell by 21% in the 24 states where abortion care remained legal and accessible post-Dobbs. However, birthing people living in the 13 states with abortion bans were nearly two times as likely as those in protective states to die during pregnancy or childbirth, or soon after giving birth. Black birthing people living in ban states were more than three times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth compared to white birthing people in these states. This disproportionate loss of Black mothers is one of the reasons that the United States has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of affluent countries.
Moreover, nearly 41.5 million women in the United States live in areas in which they have significantly limited or no access to necessary reproductive health care. Meanwhile, the maternal, reproductive and perinatal workforce faces numerous legal and structural barriers including extremely low reimbursement rates; scope of practice limitations; inconsistent licensure requirements from state to state; and inequitable access to education, funding and resources.
One content note on the texts you'll see in a moment: These ancient texts talk, unsurprisingly, about pregnant women. In the context of our contemporary gender categories, it might be useful to remember that, while many (but not all) cisgender women can get pregnant, so too can some non-binary people, some trans men, and some other people whose identities are not reflected in the framework of binary gender. Therefore today we should talk about âpregnant people,â âpeople who need abortions,â and âabortion access,â etc. and to remember that being more inclusive doesnât erase anybody. After all, women are people!
So we were back in Exodus, eh?
When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the womanâs husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-25)