Israel’s Labor, Welfare and Health Committee will discuss abortion reforms, which would allow women easier access to treatment, amid the crisis ensuing in the US over the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
srael’s Labor, Welfare and Health Committee approved abortion reforms in a preliminary reading amid the Roe v. Wade scandal that has shaken the US over the past few weeks.
The amendment will allow women to apply to get an abortion online and would allow them to receive a pharmacological abortion in more accessible places.
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, who presented the amendment, said, “I saw how the [Pregnancy Termination] committees asked questions… There were some really intimate and irrelevant questions. These were written in a chauvinistic and outdated manner that suggests that a woman’s rights are not relevant.”
As it currently stands, in Israel to get an abortion, a pregnant person must meet at least one of the following criteria:
Unmarried
Younger than 18 (the legal age of marriage)
Older than 40
The pregnancy was conceived under illegal circumstances (rape, statutory rape, incest, etc.)
The fetus has a birth defect
The pregnancy poses a risk to the physical or mental health of the mother
If a pregnant person meets the criteria, the abortion must then be approved by a Pregnancy Termination Committee. These laws were enacted in 1978 and have not been amended since.
The reform being presented at the committee would allow for a pharmacological abortion in public clinics in the community and would improve the procedure of the Pregnancy Termination Committee.
It would also allow for the forms for the abortion to be submitted online. Altogether the changes would simplify the process and would “improve the status of women’s rights to their own bodies,” according to Horowitz.
“It’s been 40 years that the Health Ministry has operated according to medieval abortion laws,” Horowitz said. “This reform would make the law more suitable to modern times. It’s time for us to move forward.”
“This reform would make the law more suitable for modern times. It’s time for us to move forward.”
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz
The abortion debate is a personal one
Committee chairwoman Efrat Rayten admitted that an abortion saved her life. “Abortions saved my life, personally, my own life and the lives of my family. I’m afraid that my basic right over my body will be taken away. It made me anxious.”
“What’s happening in the US is none of our business,” countered United Torah Judaism head Moshe Gafni. “We’re not talking about ogmat nefesh (disgusting to the soul.) This argument says that women can go and get an abortion and there will be no more fetuses, and the claim is that it’s the right of the woman. This is the discussion, and we should not have this discussion while the Knesset is about to disperse.”
He added that he is “not denying that this should be discussed… but the health minister is taking advantage of the fact that the Knesset is about to disperse to put this forward because if he had an abortion he’d implement the reform.”
“No woman is going to get an abortion of her own accord without reason,” Meretz MK Michal Rozin countered. “The experience is traumatic. The law doesn’t offer the help and support that it’s supposed to.”
Shas MK Moshe Arbel said that his party is “worried that under this law, an abortion that does not operate per the Halacha will be permitted.”
Rozin explained, however, that “we’re lucky to be Jewish; Judaism sees women. It is a cause for pride.”
The amendment, although discussed for weeks, was pushed forward amid the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion.
The justices, who passed the decision in a 6-3 vote, held that the Roe v. Wade decision was wrongly decided because the US Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.