The overturning of Roe v. Wade is, to Rabbi Avi Shafran—who serves as director of public affairs for the ḥaredi Agudath Israel of America—justified on constitutional, political, religious, and moral grounds. Yet he also worries about the possible adverse effects, especially for Jews, of such a decision:

[L]eaving each state’s voters to balance respect for personal freedom with respect for nascent life, as a reversal of Roe would do, strikes me as reasonable, while the howls of outrage at that scenario strike me as overwrought. There are two important and conflicting concerns to be weighed against one another here, and the weighing isn’t accomplished by chants and placards.

At the same time that I will heartily welcome a reversal of Roe, should the draft opinion be adopted by the court when its decision is handed down later this term, I have concerns about what might follow—such as legislative proposals that would afford a fetus full rights as a person or that outlaw abortion without exception.

There are cases in which the option of abortion does need to be available—like when a pregnancy’s progression threatens the life of the potential mother. Jewish law permits, in fact requires, abortion in such cases, and the vast majority of Americans are of similar mind. There are also pregnancies in which the fetus has genetic abnormalities or will face a fatal disease after birth. Some Jewish sources consider that a circumstance in which a woman might also be sanctioned to undergo an abortion.

Roe was a sledgehammer, and wrongly wielded. In the wake of its reversal, citizens in each state would be charged with using a scalpel to instead craft laws that treat nascent life with respect while accommodating the protection of women’s well-being.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.