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From: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Adam Reed's attack on Jews
Message-ID: <995@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 09:55:35 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.995
Posted: Fri Feb 14 09:55:35 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Feb-86 22:57:40 EST
References: <958@decwrl.DEC.COM> <1340@ihuxn.UUCP>
Reply-To: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 29
Summary: 


In article <1340@ihuxn.UUCP> gadfly@ihuxn.UUCP (Gadfly) writes:
>--
>As you know, Ken, the whole debate revolves not around whether the
>fetus is human (what the hell else could it be?), but whether it is
>a person.  What, indeed, is a person?  I submit that people can have
>honest albeit heated disagreement over the definition of "person".
>Mr. Reed was alluding to Jewish writings on just that subject.
>And not all persons have a "right" to life anyway.  The best you can
>state, Ken, is that a fetus may have some *claim* to life, just as
>Princess Margaret has some *claim* to the English throne.  Claims are
>not rights, and are not absolute.  Someone else may have a better one,
>and these circumstances change.

But what is the orthodox JEWISH opinion about the "personhood" of a fetus?
What is the traditional rabbinical stand on abortion?  Though individual
Jews may disagree on what secular laws are best, can there be any _official_
Jewish attitude, other than the Halachic writings?
                      
>But you don't really care, Ken.  All you want to do is proselytize
>for your close-minded dogma which may not be questioned.  It is not
>in the Jewish tradition to behave this way.  Thus, your obnoxious
>though exuberant dreck does not belong in net.religion.jewish.

For reasons I won't state here, I believe the analogy between the holocaust
and abortion is weak.  Nevertheless, I suspect that Ken's "close-minded
dogma" is much closer to classic rabbinical thinking than your own "modernism."

	Frank Silbermann