To the editors:
“Abortion 1990” [September 15] will probably generate many letters both pro and con. Mine will, happily, belong to the latter.
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It is interesting that, of the many professionals cited in the article, not a few were Jewish (including the author, Mrs. Levinsohn). Roy Eckhardt, in his book Jews and Christians, has a footnote that states almost 50% of American Jews are affiliated with synagogues; the others, I would assume, are “cultural” Jews who attend a temple only on the High Holy days schizophrenically maintaining their agnostic or atheist positions the rest of the year. So to them, the Talmud’s injunction that “Abortion is murder” is probably meaningless. Yet, I am sure, that these very same Jews would unequivocally condemn the Holocaust even though the moral premise behind that horror and the present day horror of abortion is the same i.e. the end justifies the means. Of course, the perceived end of America’s abortion juggernaut, eg. abused children, maternal deaths, offspring of incest, congenital defects, etc. being prevented is beyond question. It’s the means that creates controversy.
Last spring, while I was working at Clemente High School, I remarked to one of the staff that the Hispanics in the U.S. are reproducing at a rate higher than any other ethnic group. His response? “That’s why they should have more abortions.” (He’s Jewish.) In the six years I’ve known the man, I’ve never seen him smile even once; is it because he told me he has paid for several abortions himself? Perhaps. Later, when I told one of the students about this man, the teen replied “No wonder he doesn’t smile.”
Florence Hamlish Levinsohn replies:
I’m not surprised that someone with such confused views about so many things would resort to Jew-baiting. It is sad but true that ignorance and right-wing hysteria are often also anti-Semitic.
