By now, you might have heard the horror unfolding in Texas, where the Texas Supreme Court blocked a lower court ruling allowing an abortion of an unviable pregnancy, forcing the pregnant woman to flee the state to get the medical care she needs. But this bit seems to have gone undiscussed in much of the commentary (boldface mine):

Late last month, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, learned that her latest, much-wanted pregnancy was doomed because of a severe genetic disorder. If the pregnancy continued, she was likely to have a stillbirth, and if she didn’t, the baby had virtually no chance of surviving long outside the womb.

She’d made several trips to the emergency room for severe cramping and what seemed to be leaking amniotic fluid. Her doctor told her that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility, and Cox very much wants more children. So she, her husband and her doctor sued the state, seeking a court order to allow her to terminate her pregnancy in Texas. If the Texas abortion ban had workable medical exceptions, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t apply to Cox. But it doesn’t, and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, fought the Cox family and their doctor every step of the way.

While the ‘outer bounds’ of when abortion is permissible under Jewish law are debatable, even the most strict interpretation allows an abortion if the future fertility of the woman is in jeopardy. In that case, the fetus is defined as a criminal persuer (‘rodef‘), intent on harming the woman, and the ethical obligation is to have the abortion (if possible). Not ‘ok, you can have the abortion you slutty slut’, but it is akin to defending someone under physical assault.

I’m not going to pretend that the Jewish sages who wrote these opinions (which are many, many centuries old) were 21st century feminists–they weren’t. But that’s the point: even the most conservative (in the U.S. political context) Jewish opinions on abortion are absolutely clear on abortion in this circumstance.

Yet, despite the claims of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, The Great Defender of the Jews, Republican attempts to force Jews to violate their religious beliefs is nothing new: nearly twenty years ago, Republicans were attempting to do this (at the time, they failed fortunately). While South Dakota doesn’t have a large Jewish community, Texas does, so this is no longer a theoretical concern. A Jewish woman* will be forced to decide between her religious beliefs and the law of the land. So much for the ‘religious freedom’ conservatives caterwaul about all the time (yes, I know they’re full of shit and it’s just White Christian supremacy).

Definitely not putting the Judeo back into Judeo-Christian though….

*Jewish medical staff serving Jewish patients also would be forced to violate Jewish religious law, though it’s unclear if that would apply to Jewish medical staff serving non-Jewish patients (I think it would, but it’s not entirely clear). The issue isn’t that non-Jewish women are somehow ‘lesser’, but if Jews are obligated to apply Jewish law to non-Jewish patients (e.g., murdering non-Jews is obviously wrong, but non-Jews are under no obligation to keep the Sabbath, and it’s not clear where abortion would fall along that continuum, though I would argue it’s on the ‘murder’ end of things).