Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

The birth of every child is an important event for the mother.   The birth of the first child is the greatest and most cathartic experience for a mother, if a woman is ready to be a mother.  Being a mother is not simple.  It is a physiological relationship, a psychological relationship, a spiritual relationship.   More than that, it is a metaphysical relationship -- somehow complete identification between mother and child.

“That is why I cannot understand it, I cannot grasp it, to me it is something vulgar, this clamor of the liberals that abortion be permitted. It’s not a clamor anymore – it’s a legislated fact.

“How can a mother kill her baby? I can’t understand it, I cannot grasp it…"

("New York State Declares War on Life," by Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer. In American Thinker, January 27, 2019.)

In 1975, Rabbi Soloveitchik made the following statement while he was teaching a class:

“And if you kill the fetus, a time will come when even infants will be killed…If the dominant principle governing the logos [“thinking capacity”] is that abortion is morally permissible because only a mother has a right to decide whether she wishes to be a mother, then infants may similarly have their lives terminated after birth."

(Source: Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, "You Murder the Children." Article and Quote Source: The Jewish Press )