hushpiper

I wrote this unfortunately long "summary" in a youtube comment, funnily enough. In light of current news, I think it's worth copying it here, so here it is in its entirety.

The religious viewpoints on abortion were touched on a bit [in the video I was commenting on], but deserve some more specific addressing. Many religious groups take an anti-abortion stance, but in almost every case, it is a primarily political stance, NOT theological, though most people in those groups don't realize it. Long summary and then sources/further reading:

Talmudic rulings and practice in Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism require abortion in cases where it has any chance of harming the mother. It is stated in Exodus in the original Hebrew that a person who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry is subject to a fine, not to death as would be the case if it were considered murder (which also carries over to abortion, as abortions are simply intentional miscarriages), which is interpreted to mean an unborn child is not fully human yet. Many poskim discreetly and privately approve abortions for the Orthodox women in their care, which they would be unable to do if abortion were outlawed;
Mormons believe that life begins long before conception and that stillborn or miscarried children (and thus by extension aborted children) may not have been ensouled at time of "death" (they do not require temple ordinances to be performed for them), and that if they were ensouled, they either did not require an Earth life, or will get another chance at it. Mormon policy does penalize voluntary abortions, but supports them in cases of rape, incest, and harm to the mother;
(White) Evangelicals have historically held varied views on when life begins, either at birth or at conception. However unlike the Catholics, the life-at-conception camps largely didn't develop specific theology around it. This is part of why the largest Evangelical denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), passed several resolutions in the 70s in support of abortion for cases of rape, incest, and harm (including emotional and mental harm) to the mother, and in favor of a limited governmental approach which gave expectant mothers access to "the full range of medical services", and 90% of Texas Baptists believed their state's abortion laws were too restrictive, among many other signs of the pro-abortion-access and abortion-apathetic positions that were common then. Abortion was seen by Evangelicals as a primarily Catholic issue, not something that affected them.

I can't speak for the political reasons for Orthodox Jewish alignment with the pro-life movement, so I'll refrain from comment there. Mormon anti-abortion advocacy is complicated, but has been convincingly argued to be part of their long-running (and still incomplete) attempt to "assimilate" into American society, thereby hopefully stamping out anti-Mormon bigotry and achieving access to the privileges of mainstream acceptance. The same can be said for the rest of their allegiance to right-wing American politics and the Republican party.

Evangelical opposition to abortion is its own animal, but it has been convincingly argued that this was (unfortunately) related to the desegregation of schools, opposition to which marked the starting point of the formation of the Religious Right. After this it was helped along by opposition to the ERA by activists like Phyllis Schlafly (a Catholic who was very popular among Evangelical women), eventually culminating in the formation of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell Sr. (who was notably anti-desegregation) in 1979. The SBC issued a resolution in June 1979 in favor of abortion access, as they had throughout the 70s; also in June 1979, the Moral Majority was born. In June 1980, the SBC issued a resolution in favor of "appropriate legislation and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother."

Regarding Judaism:

https://twitter.com/AbbyChavaStein/status/1466426335946022921
https://forward.com/life/406674/orthodox-jewish-women-abortion-stories/
https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/the-torah-of-reproductive-freedom?s=w (scroll past the images to get to the theological discussion)

Regarding Mormonism:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ (specific searches include "abortion", "premortal existence", and "salvation"
https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1433790722759708700
The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation by Armand Mauss
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/ and https://sunstone.org/ have many open-access articles discussing Mormonism from the 60s and 70s onwards, including regarding abortion, the ERA, "model minority" status and assimilation.

Regarding Evangelicalism: