Jewish Press of Tampa

New abortion law violates Jewish tenet, suit claims



A South Florida synagogue has filed a lawsuit challenging the state over a new law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks. Under current law, Florida allows abortions up to 24 weeks.

Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, a 25-year-old independent synagogue in Boynton Beach, claims the new law, which has been signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and is set to take effect on July 1, violates the religious freedom rights of Jews.

The lawsuit, which was filed June 1 in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee claims that the act “prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”

The lawsuit also argues that religious minorities in Florida will be harmed and that the law will threaten Jews “by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews.”

The suit states that the new law “establishes the religion of its proponents and prohibits the free exercise of the Jewish religion by prohibiting plaintiffs members, congregants and supporters from exercising their religious beliefs in the most intimate decisions of their lives in consultation with their rabbis, medical providers and their family.

“The Act reflects the views of Christian nationalists who seek to deny religious freedom to all others, under the arrogant, self-righteous notion that only they are capable of understanding God’s law and judgments and the religious views of all others are false, evil and not entitled to respect or constitutional protections.”

The lawsuit states that contrary to the new legislation, “Jewish law does not consider life to begin at conception or at 15 weeks and most Jews… do not believe that all the rights of personhood are conferred upon a fetus. In fact, under traditional Jewish law life begins at birth and if a fetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself.

Further, the lawsuit claims, the new law harms the “cherished ideal of the separation of church and state which has been the cornerstone of American democracy since its inception and the reason why (the U.S.) has been so successful and the envy of freedom-loving people throughout the world.”

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