Why Jews Need Not Fear a Change in the Supreme Court’s Stance toward Abortion

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, raising speculation that its justices might overturn precedents set by Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and other landmark decisions. As American Jews tend overwhelmingly to be pro-choice, only a minority would likely welcome such an outcome. Howard Slugh and Tal Forgang, however, argue that their concerns may be unfounded:

Some Jewish groups have argued that Roe must be upheld because, in some instances, Jewish women might have a religious obligation to have an abortion. As one of us has previously written, . . . “there is widespread acceptance,” even among Jews who take a more restrictive view of the matter, “that abortions are allowed when necessary to save a mother’s life.” Some Jews regard this allowance as a requirement, which gives rise to a religious obligation to have an abortion in some rare circumstances.

[As a result, some Jewish] groups claim that the Supreme Court must maintain a broad right to abortion to protect Jewish women’s religious liberty. Taken on its own terms, this argument is misguided in a number of ways.

Jewish women in New York or other predominantly liberal states will not wake up the day after Roe is reversed to find abortion illegal in their state. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe and holds that there is no constitutional right to abortion, abortion will not become illegal nationwide. Instead, each state will set its own abortion policy democratically, based on the desires and needs of its population. States with large Jewish populations such as New York, New Jersey, and California are not likely to restrict abortion any more than they currently do.

Even women who live in states with “strict” abortion regulations would be unlikely to face a conflict between their religious mandates and abortion regulations. . . . In the unlikely event that a genuine conflict were to arise between an abortion regulation and a Jewish woman’s religious obligation to have an abortion, the proper course of action would be for her to seek an individualized accommodation, not to demand a religious veto over any law that conflicted with her faith.

Indeed, as Slugh and Fortgang argue in follow-up article, overturning Roe could lead to a general expansion of religious freedom.

Read more at Public Discourse

More about: Abortion, Freedom of Religion, Supreme Court

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF