Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the Rishon Lezion and former chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel,
slammed on Sunday the hospital committees in charge of advising patients on abortion.
“Why is it okay to kill fetuses that have a heart and a soul – because an ‘advisory committee’ decided that it is okay to murder fetuses?” he told a magazine published by the Ma’ayanei Hayeshua movement.
“In Egypt there was also an advisory committee that decided that is permissible to bathe in the blood of Jewish babies.”
Rabbi Eliyahu accused doctors who assist in the abortion process of murder, saying “Since Israel’s inception close to a million Jewish children have been slashed while alive in their mothers’ wombs.”
He said that the high birthrates in religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors are aimed at ‘bringing the time of redemption forward.’
In March 2006 the Health Ministry reported that for every 1,000 births there are 140 terminated pregnancies. In 2004 the hospital committees approved 21,286 abortions, and denied only 400 requests for pregnancy termination.
The data did not include illegal abortions carried out without the committees’ authorization.
According to the Health Ministry, most abortions are the result of rape, incest or extramarital relations; 18 percent of abortions were performed due to the possibility of mental or physical damage to the pregnant women.
Some 10 percent of all pregnancy terminations were conducted for reasons of age on women aged under 17 or over 40.
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