How to Change the Way We Think About Abortion, with Erica Pelman

Tablet Studios

Tablet Magazine

Religion & Spirituality, Judaism, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are few political issues we consider more contentious than abortions. But what if we are getting this critical subject all wrong? Erica Pelman, the founder and director of SHIFRA, a group that helps Jewish women dealing with unplanned pregnancies, tells Liel about her journey from a high-powered job at the Department of Labor to starting her own organization, about the importance of listening to expecting mothers in distress, and about how we should rethink pretty much everything we think we know about abortion and have a more soulful and helpful debate that transcends those deeply flawed labels, “pro-choice” and “pro-life.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello podcast fans. It's producer Josh Cross here. If your email inbox right now is anything like mine, you're being inundated with the end of year giving asks. Well, I'm coming at you with one more. Here at Tablet, we are proud, thrilled really, to be able to offer you Jewish content, on podcasts, on our site, in newsletters, and even on Zoom. We've been bringing you old favorites, new shows and miniseries you've liked, and we've even got some new ones coming soon that you're going to love. But we can't do it without a little help from our friends, which is where you come in.
0:39.8	So before 2024 comes to a close, on behalf of the entire podcast team, I really hope
0:45.5	you'll consider supporting our work.
0:46.8	Head on over to tabletmag.com slash donate. Donate. Hey there, and welcome back to Rootless, the podcast that has the difficult but essential conversations you know you need to be having right now.
1:25.2	And when it comes to difficult but essential conversations, few are more essential or more
1:30.6	difficult than the one about abortions.
1:33.5	But why exactly are we having such a hard time talking about abortion?
1:38.2	Why has this issue become so divisive?
1:41.3	In this age of very, very short attention spans and virtually non-existing long-term
1:46.3	historical memories, it pays to go back and consider the way things were. Ready? Let's play a little
1:52.7	game. It's 1973, and the Supreme Court just ruled on Roe v. Wade finding abortion to be a
1:59.4	constitutionally protected right. Two public figures
2:02.5	were asked for their opinion. One said the court had gone too far. The other praised it as,
2:09.5	and I quote, a great, great decision. Care to guess which was which? Mr. Too Far was a freshly elected Democratic senator from Delaware, one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
2:24.6	The one celebrating row, the very Republican First Lady Betty Ford, which amazingly was par for the course at the time.
2:33.3	In 1977, for example, a general social survey opinion poll
2:37.2	asked Americans how they felt about abortion
2:39.8	and found that 39% of Republicans said abortion
2:43.5	should be allowed for any reason, any reason at all,
2:46.6	compared to only 35% of Democrats who thought the same.
2:50.2	And this went on for a while in 1983.
2:53.3	The Senate voted on a constitutional amendment
	...

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