Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Tzfat (Safed) and a prominent figure in the Religious Zionist movement, lambasted the American Left on Tuesday, castigating progressive Democrats over their abortion policies. In an opinion piece published Tuesday, Rabbi Eliyahu decried the opposition of many on the American Left to a draft of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. On Monday , a draft of the ruling was leaked to the media, suggesting that a majority of the court’s nine justices have backed an opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which argued that there is a constitutional right to legal abortion. The case before the court revolves around a legal challenge to a Mississippi state ban on abortions beyond the 15th week of pregnancy. Rabbi Eliyahu noted that the publication of the draft has sparked searing criticism from the Left “both abroad and in Israel”. “Leftists both abroad and in Israel are screaming ‘US Supreme Court judges have decided to nullify the right to a legal abortion,” Rabbi Eliyahu wrote. The rabbi condemned abortion, and warned that abortion on demand posed ethical questions about the basis of the prohibition on murder. “The translation of this is that their court cancelled the legal right of a mother to murder her children, the right of a doctor to cut up a living fetus into pieces inside of a woman’s body so that it can be removed piece by piece.” “We’re not talking about a woman who needs to undergo a procedure to save her life because of some medical condition. We’re talking about cases in which the family planned to buy a new car or go on vacation and suddenly the women finds that she’s pregnant and far along in her pregnancy. The law enabled her to kill the living fetus because of these lofty values. And that is what the US Supreme Court is about to cancel.” “It is important to say that if there is a legal right to kill a fetus, why shouldn’t there be a legal right for a mother to kill her child, so long as the child is under a year old? That was the norm in Greece and Rome, and in many Arab countries prior to Mohammed. It was permitted to bury children alive, so long as they were small.” “The US Supreme Court justices are correct to rule that a mother or father has no right to murder, nor does any ruler have it, period.”
