Sermon – Mattot: A woman’s right to choose

Written by Rabbi Hannah Kingston — 28 July 2022

For generations there has been controversy surrounding how religion views the autonomy of a woman. The patriarchy makes an effective argument that women can be silenced by the will of God, and the law of religious language.

For as Sophie taught us, our biblical narrative teaches that women’s voices are harder to hear and are inherently less reliable. We see this week in Torah a disparity between the vows that men and women make. When a woman makes a vow, it can be annulled by the male authority in her life, exemplifying the secondary legal and social status of females in biblical legislation.

Knowing that this treatment of women was the norm by societal standards, it feels wrong to judge this part of Torah by my modern-day context. But in the wrong hands, this text can be used to insinuate that every time a woman finds her voice or self-determines her own life, it can be overruled by the invocation of biblical law.

Something is problematic here in Torah, and something is still problematic today.

For we have recently witnessed what happens when religious law is taken into the wrong hands, when something seemingly goes wrong. It has been a month since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade became a reality and with it there have already been, and will continue to be, tragic consequences from the tighter restrictions surrounding abortion law.

It feels as if once again women are struggling to be heard. That women’s actions are being overridden by men who feel as if they have the right to annul a woman’s desires. And it feels as if this silencing of women is getting much closer to home.

So, this morning I am going to speak about abortion, about what it means to me as a woman and as a Jew. About the worry we should all have for future generations, as women once again begin the battle for bodily autonomy and fight against being silenced.

The pro-life movement in America is summed up by two sentences, ‘A just society protects all life. A moral society values all life.’ In their argument, led by a Christian conservative majority, life begins at conception. This is not a biological argument, but a religious one. One that believes that conception is the moment at which a soul descends to a new life, that the collection of cells even in the earliest stages of pregnancy therefore, is already a person in its own right.

The pro-life movement has created a false dichotomy between being pro-life and pro-choice. It favours the life of a non-viable foetus, seeing it as more important than the quality of life of the mother and of the child. It argues that children need to be alive, but not cared for. It argues that life itself is a religious value, but that quality of life is not.

Whether or not Judaism allows abortion is a different sermon in its entirety.

But regardless of that, what we are seeing on the streets of America, the restrictions on abortion in wide swaths of southern and midwestern states, the silencing of protestors fighting for women’s rights to control their own destinies,  feels terrifying, both as a woman and as a Jew…

A Jew who is told every Yom Kippur when we read in Deuteronomy, ‘I put before you life and death – choose life’.

 

Because as Jews we should choose life. But we can argue that the pro-life movement isn’t about life, it is about birth – it doesn’t cherish the life past this by offering the support parents need after the birth of a child. By putting in place universal healthcare, strong social services, living wages and good accessible education.

Being pro-choice is about choosing life, the life of a woman. A woman’s life matters, her words matter and her vows matter. If a woman chooses to take control of her life, for any reason, if she chooses abortion as the right thing for her body, for her quality of life, that should be respected.

As rabbi Amitai Adler wrote:

Being a Jew is being ‘opposed to laws that perpetuate bigotry and oppress the poor and powerless, and to laws that take away the freedom of Jews and other Americans to practice their religion in their lives as they see fit (or to practice no religion at all). We should oppose these anti-abortion laws, regardless of what our personal opinions about abortion or ensoulment may be, because our tradition has always encouraged pluralistic tolerance of multiple viewpoints, but has also clearly taught us about the importance of justice, and the need to preserve life– not the debatable life of a fetus, but the incontrovertible life of the women and girls who may have unwanted pregnancies’

This ruling is not about life, but about controlling women, keeping them in their place, a place perceived to be dictated by religious law and loosely grounded in biblical text. Its institution takes away a fundamental human right, and silences women across the world.

 

And whilst the text we read today may seem to my modern eyes as if it too is a controlling text, centred around silencing the choice of a woman, the rabbis of the Mishnah disagree. Seeing Judaism as a living religion, a religion that evolves with the constant reading and interpretation of original texts and a religion in a continuous dialogue, they refer us to the final verse we read today, claiming that this is the crux of the matter:

Every vow and every sworn obligation of self-denial may be upheld by her husband or annulled by her husband.

The rabbis, perhaps also plagued by the difficulty raised by this text, believe that agency is retained by women, except in cases of total self-denial, where a woman is putting herself in mortal danger by incapacitating herself.

Therefore, using the logic of our ancient rabbis, we can make an argument for legal safe abortion, protecting women from the backstreet abortions of the past. Because access to the healthcare that a woman needs, either physically or emotionally, is not a decision of total denial, and therefore is not a choice that can be denied by any man.

So being proud Jews, we should also be proudly pro-choice.

We should be pro-choice for all women, pro a woman’s right to control her body, to choose what is right for her, to get the medical care that she needs.

We should be pro the women like Hannah, who we read of today, who cried out for a baby. But who cried out on her terms. Who chose to have a child, when she was ready, and who sought help doing so.

We should be pro the women like Dinah, who in our narrative was raped, who had no access to birth control, who we never hear from again.

We should be pro the women like Yehudit in the Talmud, who understood that the Halacha of procreation applied to men and not women, and so chose to take a sterilising potion because she did not want a baby.

And we should be pro the woman like me, whose planned pregnancy ending in a miscarriage revealed on a scan, would have been life threatening. And who, in grief, took the abortion medication, the medication now made illegal in certain states even in these circumstances.

So whilst I am not asking you to share my anger, I am asking this:

May we never silence another human, male or female, by making decisions for them, even when we believe we are right. Rather may we honour the stories of those like Hannah, Dinah, Yehudit and so many others, who chose what they wanted and needed for their bodies.

May we never restrict someone’s access to the safe and necessary health care, so that they can receive healing of body and of soul.

And ultimately, may we respect each other’s opinions, knowing that they will be diverse and varied, and may we never act with judgement, knowing that a decision around this is sensitive and never easy, and that when met with compassion and understanding we can support someone in even their most difficult of moments.