{"id":69052,"date":"2020-01-25T09:16:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T07:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=69052"},"modified":"2023-08-20T13:25:25","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T10:25:25","slug":"before-i-form-anything-in-my-womb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/before-i-form-anything-in-my-womb\/","title":{"rendered":"Before I Form Anything In My Womb"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cBefore I formed you in the womb, I knew you.\u201d (Jer. 1:5)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Plastered on a giant yellow billboard, these words hovered heavily over I-64 on the drive between my parents\u2019 houses my entire childhood. Next to the quotation was a computer-created image of a fully formed fetus visible through a transparent womb; at the bottom, a phone number in white print next to the bolded words \u201cPregnancy Help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the first passage of Tanakh I ever knew by heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, walking the short distance from Hebrew Union College to the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood of New York City, this verse would ring in my mind. Not the plethora of responsa permitting the abortion I had chosen to have. Not the lifetime of pro-choice voices I had been surrounded by. Not even the sound of Debbie Friedman\u2019s voice in my headphones, \u201cthose who sow\u2026\u201d I could only hear these words: \u201cBefore I formed you in the womb…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the problem with the anti-choice movement \u201cowning\u201d the religious argument on abortion. It distorts our perception of our own values.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was as if, on that short walk, I left my liberal religious principles behind. By the time I entered that Planned Parenthood, I was no longer a Reform rabbinical student, and instead, only a secular, privileged woman exercising her right to choose.<\/span><\/p>\n

When a doctor who looked just like me placed the small, round pill in my hand, I grasped for the only comfort I could: \u201c<\/span>asher yatzar oti b\u2019chochmah\u2026<\/span><\/i>\u201d [\u201cwho has made me in wisdom\u201d]. But my whispered words were no strong wind against that yellow billboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

How much more autonomy I would have felt on that walk knowing Rabbi Mordecai Winkler\u2019s 1913 responsum arguing that a woman could terminate a pregnancy in the event that it posed a mental health risk for her, as mine did for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

How much more empowered I would have been on that walk had I been equipped with Rabbi Hara Person\u2019s invocation of<\/span> choosing life<\/span><\/a>–the safety and well-being of the pregnant person\u2019s life–as a primary religious argument supporting abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

How much easier a necessary decision like mine would have been for unknowable numbers of Jews with uteruses had the religious rhetoric on abortion not been co-opted by anti-choice voices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two weeks later, the bleeding stopped. I traveled again, a longer walk across town to the mikveh, where I met a mikveh guide from<\/span> ImmerseNYC<\/span><\/a>. My pocket held a crumpled, photocopied ritual for a post-abortion immersion. That piece of paper, stained by indistinguishable droplets from the mikveh and my eyes, finally replaced that yellow billboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a world where the religious rhetoric of the anti-choice movement shouts louder than the religious values of pro-choice Jewish leanings, ritual has the power to restore our values to our voices. Ritual was my access point back to Judaism after my abortion, as it will be more many more after me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before <\/span>I<\/span><\/em> form anything in <\/span>my<\/span><\/em> womb, I now know that there is space in Judaism for my reproductive choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":69053,"id":69053,"title":"jer1-womb","filename":"jer1-womb.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/jer1-womb.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/before-i-form-anything-in-my-womb\/jer1-womb\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jer1-womb","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":69052,"date":"2020-01-25 07:16:13","modified":"2020-01-25 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