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Jewish Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: Women and Children

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Religious Perspectives on Human Vulnerability in Bioethics

Part of the book series: Advancing Global Bioethics ((AGBIO,volume 2))

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Abstract

From a metaphysical point of view, every entity or being in the world is vulnerable except for God. Contingency means susceptibility to being changed. Obviously, only changes which in some sense are contrary to the entity’s nature, ends or interests are indications of vulnerability.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Oedipus at Colonus, 1224–1228. “Not to be born, by all acclaim, were best.”

  2. 2.

    There are many philosophers today who regard future generations as vulnerable since we can easily harm them but they cannot harm us. This applies to issues of distributive justice and to our duties to preserve enough resources for posterity. It is a complex issue, since all depends whether future people are regarded as just possible (or potential) as in our discussion here, or as given actual individuals who simply do not exist yet but will exist anyway. See my Genethics quoted above.

  3. 3.

    Ronald Dworkin has suggested that the way the abortion debate is conducted should change; and, instead of searching for the moment in pregnancy in which the fetus becomes a human being with full moral standing and protection, we should treat the creation of human beings as a process and the protection of fetuses as a matter of increasing degree. This implies that the concept of vulnerability can itself be applied only gradually, and (despite the possible air of paradox) we can say that the less advanced the fetus is, the less vulnerable! See Dworkin (1993).

  4. 4.

    There are today periods in which gestation takes place outside the body of the mother, both in the few days of IVF that precede implantation, and in incubators hosting premature babies for a much longer period than ever in the past. These two environments of the development of the human embryo/fetus will definitely extend in time in the not too distant future, which will require rethinking and maybe redrawing the lines between the three categories we are using here (merely planned children, fetuses and children).

  5. 5.

    All the English translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are taken from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (1985).

  6. 6.

    Babylonian Talmud, tractate “sotah” 12a.

  7. 7.

    Tractate “eruvin”, 13b.

  8. 8.

    Maimonides. Mishne Torah, Laws of Murder, 1:9.

  9. 9.

    Mishna. “Ohalot”, chapter 7, section 6.

  10. 10.

    For a detailed discussion, see (Steinberg 1998, pp. 74–80).

  11. 11.

    It might look quite striking that in the seminal (and pioneering) work of Immanuel Jakobovits (1959), the term “rights” does not appear in the index.

  12. 12.

    The first and best known philosopher to have articulated this idea is Will Kymlicka (1989) in his series of publications starting from Liberalism, Community and Culture.

References

  • Dworkin, R. 1993. Life’s dominion. New York: Knopf.

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  • Heyd, D. 1992. Genethics: Moral issues in the creation of people. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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  • Jakobovits, I. 1959. Jewish medical ethics. New York: Bloch.

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  • Kymlicka, W. 1989. Liberalism, community and culture. Oxford: Clarendon.

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  • Schroeder, D., and E. Gefenas. 2009. The intractability of the nonidentity problem. In Harming future persons, eds. M. Roberts and D. Wasserman, 3–25. Dordrecht: Springer.

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  • Steinberg, A. 1998. Halakhic and medical encyclopedia, vol. 2. Jerusalem: Schlesinger Institute.

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  • 1985. Tanakh: The holy scriptures. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

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  • Thomson, J. J. 1971. A defense of abortion. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:47–66.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Prof. David Heyd

Authors
  1. Prof. David Heyd
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Correspondence to David Heyd .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, School of Bioethics, Rome, Italy

    Joseph Tham

  2. Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, School of Bioethics, Rome, Italy

    Alberto Garcia

  3. UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights, Rome, Italy

    Gonzalo Miranda

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Heyd, D. (2014). Jewish Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: Women and Children. In: Tham, J., Garcia, A., Miranda, G. (eds) Religious Perspectives on Human Vulnerability in Bioethics. Advancing Global Bioethics, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8736-9_18

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