This is important, and the story has many different aspects deserving their own discussion threads.
Now all we need is participants.
By Julianne McShane - May 5, 2022
… In the sermon, which ( Rabbi Mara Nathan, the senior rabbi at Temple Beth-El in San Antonio) titled “The Right to Choose is a Jewish Value,” Nathan took aim at the law, known as S.B. 8, and outlined how, as she put it, “Judaism has always been pro-choice.”
“In response to her sermon, Nathan received a standing ovation, she said, along with angry reactions from “a few people who were upset” that she addressed abortion access from the pulpit. But Nathan saw speaking up as part of her rabbinical responsibility, she said. …”
More than a half-dozen major religions and denominations support abortion rights with few or some limits — Conservative and Reform Judaism, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Unitarian Universalist Church and the United Church of Christ, among others …
Unitarian Universalists, its central organization, passed a resolution in 1987 affirming “the right to choose contraception and abortion as a legitimate expression of our constitutional rights.” In 2015, it issued a “Statement of Conscience,” outlining its support for the reproductive justice framework.
The United Church of Christ, a mainline Protestant denomination, has released statements and passed resolutions supporting abortion rights since the 1970s.
“… The network of over 2,000 faith leaders helped more than 250,000 women obtain abortions from 1967 to 1973, according to Gillian Frank, a historian of gender and sexuality who is writing a book about the Clergy Consultation Service.”
Other religions, including Islam, the Baha’i faith and the United Methodist and Episcopal churches, allow abortion out of medical necessity. Nathan said support for abortion is found in Jewish holy texts, and in her sermon last fall, she quoted a passage from the Talmud, the main source of Jewish law and theology, that she said establishes the right to terminate a pregnancy if it is endangering a pregnant person’s life.
