Opinion: Texas put a bounty on my rabbi. Is it time for us to leave?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

This is a great piece written by a good friend of my son

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SB 8 was nominally crafted to prohibit abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, but that’s not the part that concerns me. Rather, it’s the provision that delegates enforcement to individual Texans. Anyone in the state can take private civil action not only against those who seek or provide an abortion, but also those who merely assist in pursuit of one. You’ll find the leadership of my own synagogue in that latter category.

Like most American Jews, I belong to a denomination that believes life begins at birth and places the utmost value on that life — especially when carrying a future child. That’s why, for example, rabbis have developed a specific process for accommodating a woman’s pregnancy cravings if she happens to hanker for a slice of honey-glazed ham. Her wellbeing, and that of the fetus, matters far more than Kosher law.

That’s also why Danny Horwitz, a rabbi at Congregation Beth Yeshurun, once explicitly instructed a woman to get an abortion after hearing about how another child would put undue stress on her preexisting health issues.

“Thus, when this woman came to me for direction, I told her not that she could have an abortion, but that she must have an abortion, that the God of my understanding would want her to do it,” he wrote.

That advice alone would likely be in violation of SB 8.

I have to wonder how long until a self-proclaimed “baby-murder bounty hunter” like state Rep. Briscoe Cain, one of the bill’s sponsors, fixes his metaphorical crosshairs on my synagogue.

I also have to wonder how long until someone drops the metaphor.

Synagogues have already become targets in our nation’s increasingly violent culture war. In 2018, a white supremacist terrorist murdered 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh because they supported refugees. The anti-abortion movement hasn’t hesitated to shed blood in pursuit of its own crusade, killing doctors, clinic employees, and security and law enforcement. In 2015, three people were murdered and nine injured in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. Anti-abortion extremists are considered a domestic terrorist threat by the Department of Justice.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. It's long since time to leave.

When My Son The Astronomer finishes graduate school and has a permanent job, I hope to move to be a lot closer to him. Right now we are about 2,000 miles apart. I have already told him that there are parts of the country I would not be willing to live in, and I hope he would not want to live there either. I'm talking all of the South. My son is at least as liberal as I am, and I think he's very much on the same page. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to have a child who is a Trumper or Conservative of any kind.