Why I am voting against 48 (the pro-life amendment)

I received the recent ADL bulletin, “urging” me to vote no on 46 and 48. I do not urge anyone to vote one way or the other on these amendments or on anything else in this election. I am, however, voting against 48, and will explain my reasoning.

Amendment 48 would define “personhood” from the moment of conception. This is clearly a pro-life amendment.

Before entering the substance of the question, I must say that I admire the political activism and communal responsibility of the 19-year-old woman who got this on the ballot. We need that kind of passion in all citizens, and it is especially admirable in a teenager.

The ADL would urge us to vote against Amendment 48 for three basic reasons.

First, it would be contrary to US Supreme Court precedent.

The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that “separate but equal” schools — i.e., segregated schools — were constitutional. All those who fought the good fight to overturn this constitutional enshrinement of discrimination went against “Supreme Court precedent.”

Clearly, Plessy v. Ferguson was fought because people brought values to the argument that transcended constitutional precedent. The values that fought for equality in education were basic human rights, whose foundation are in the Hebrew Bible, where Genesis records that the human being is created in the Divine image.

The Hebrew Bible is the foundation of human equality.

And it was the values associated with equality, not Supreme Court precedent, that drove the civil rights movement.

People wage battles to pass or defeat laws all the time — including laws in the Constitution — on the basis of their values. Laws in the Constitution are revised or overturned often. It is healthy for political debate for partisans on each side to be open about the values that drive their political positions.

The second reason the ADL opposes 48 is because the amendment offends the ADL’s values.

“For decades, the ADL has supported the right of every woman to make important life and health decisions without government intrusion. These are personal private decision that should be made by individuals, their doctors and their families — not extremists rewriting the state Constitution.”

I am voting against Amendment 48 because it would restrict freedom of religion based on the Torah.

The values of the Torah posit that no human body or fetus is one’s own. They are entrusted to us by the L-rd, and it is the Torah that guides how we are to care for this trust. Now, the Torah permits and even mandates abortion in extremely rare circumstances.

The justification of an abortion stems from a ramified Jewish case law, beginning with Exodus 21:22, not from abstract discussions as to when “life” or “personhood” begins. The Jewish position on abortion is not locked in by these unbending principles; that is the advantage of a law-based religion, which draws distinctions between stages of pregnancy, and which rejects most reasons for an abortion, but not all.

Amendment 48, in defining “personhood” as beginning with conception, would render any abortion a murder. That would restrict my freedom of religion as a Torah-based Jew — my right to regard the human body and the fetus as a trust given by G-d, whose fate are ruled by the teachings of the Torah — not by “individuals and their doctors and their families.”

Yes, the potential mother and her doctor offer indispensable information without which a decision on abortion, based on the Torah, cannot be made with integrity. But the fundamental value system remains different: Is my body or my fetus my own, or are they a Divine trust? My value says, a Divine trust.

When the approach to abortion is based on other values, such as the right of an individual to decide for herself whether to abort, or the right of an individual doctor to advise an abortion, we have a strictly secular approach, not based on the Torah or on Jewish law. I wish the ADL would argue for or against Amendment 48 on the basis of the values and the teachings of the Torah, not on the zeitgeist.

I do agree with the ADL’s third reason for opposing 48. It would “rewrite the state Constitution.” And it would rewrite it in a way that, the ADL says, would affect “stem cell research, birth control options and even property and inheritance rights.”

I am not sure that the specific implications of Amendment 48 that are identified by the ADL will come to pass, but I am sure that no one really knows exactly how Amendment 48 would affect these — and other — areas.

That is why this Amendment is dangerous. Its legal intent and implications are maddeningly vague.

Just like the most recent “ethics amendment” ended up affecting, or potentially affecting, a whole slew of areas not predicted by the amendment’s backers, the same is true with Amendment 48. It is unwise to approve amendments whose impact is extremely unclear.

And so, I am voting against Amendment 48 because it offends my values, it would curtail a Jew’s freedom of religion, and it is a Pandora’s Box.