The July 28 issue of The Chronicle included a column by Rabbi Mark Levin explaining the Jewish position on abortion.
Your Aug. 18 issue included a rebuttal by Lee Levin (no relation) attacking the rabbi’s position, which, when you overlook the language of the writer, consists of a defense of the Catholic position on the issue. This is clear from the writer’s statement, “The obvious answer is that ensoulment comes at conception.” First of all, the term “ensoulment” is a Catholic, not a Jewish, term. Second, since the “soul” is an abstract concept, no answer can be “obvious.” Jewish law does address the question of when life begins—at the moment that the child’s head exits the womb.
Moreover, the writer speaks of abortion as a procedure which crushes the “unborn child’s” skull and tears it limb from limb, whereas in the vast majority of cases the fetus that is destroyed is nowhere close to this level of development. The procedure that Lee describes would occur only in cases where the abortion would be necessary to save the life of the mother. In such cases, Jewish law unambiguously states that the life of the mother takes precedence over the potential life of the embryo.
What Lee Levin’s argument boils down to is that Rabbi Levin’s position is wrong because it contradicts Catholic teaching. Such an opinion hardly deserves space in a Jewish publication.
Stu Lewis, Prairie Village, Kansas
