n? In such situations, the fetus does not have equal value with the mother, and allowing the fetus to be lost is not the same as permitting the woman carrying the fetus to die or otherwise suffer. Judaism generally views the fetus as a part of its mother. Just as a person may choose to sacrifice a limb or organ to be cured of a malady, so may the fetus be removed for the sake of the pregnant woman. Isaac Klein, a 20th-century conservative rabbi, elaborated on a ruling of Maimonides against a "pursuer" that is comparable to the law of self-defense: "Since the child causing a difficult birth and threatening the woman's life is regarded as one pursuing her and trying to kill her it may rightly be aborted." Neither Anglo-Saxon law nor the U.S. Constitution has ever given a fetus the same legal status as a woman. Until a baby is born there is only a potential person. When abortion was illegal, it was reviewed as a felony rather than a homicide. The fetus has always been a potential rather than an actual person.(4) What right does a woman have to an abortion? One answer is that the right of living persons takes precedence over any rights of potential persons, just as immediate or present needs take precedence over future or potential needs. This question can also be restated: What right does anyone have to impose mandatory pregnancy on a woman? The ethical question is not whether abortion can be justified, but whether we focus on an embryo or fetus as the object of value or whether we focus on the woman as a moral agent who must have freedom of choice. When Moses asked God his name, God said, "I am who I am," or, in the future tense, "I will be who I will be." God is a free moral being whose actions are not determined by cause and effect. Humans made in the image of God are likewise moral beings precisely because they engage in free choice in all of their decisions. A passage in Genesis describes humans as moral decision makers who, like God,...
