012579 Rabbi Yehudah Levin condemned abortion and other forms of moral depravity

To the Editor:

At the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on January 22, 1979 Rabbi Yehudah Levin, as spokesman for over one thousand Orthodox rabbis who speak in behalf of one and a half million Orthodox Jewish Americans condemned abortion and other forms of moral depravity. He called upon governors and mayors throughout the United States to use their lawful police power to put a swift stop to the wholesale wanton killing of unborn babies noting that no truly civilized, God fearing society can condone the use of tax money to promote abortion.

Too frequently, the statement continued, the immorality is imposed on communities by tyrannical despotic judges who are in a state of insurrection against God's eternal Moral Law. He goes on to say that if this insurrection is not quelled soon by the strong, courageous action of our elected officials, our political system, our educational system, and our national morale will be irreparably undermined. To recover her position of moral and spiritual leadership, America must take immediate action.

The Rabbi's statement hardly supports Polly Rothstein's claim that "women have a basic constitutional right to choose legal abortion." Nor does it lend support to her stance that those who hold a different view are "a group of moral absolutists who wish to use the government to impose on all the view that abortion is homicide."

In calling upon governors and mayors to act, the rabbi maintained that it is a function of government to protect the unborn and to prevent using tax money to exploit poor women. With Ms. Rothstein, he advocates "equal protection of the law" but with the proviso that the unborn be not arbitrarily excluded from that protection.

Patrick H. McHugh