Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
Supreme Court of the United States (1988)

Agudath Israel of America is a national grassroots Orthodox Jewish movement with tens of thousands of members across the United States. It was founded in 1922 as the American arm of the world-wide Agudath Israel movement, for the purpose of uniting the American Orthodox Jewish community under its organizational banner. The movement is led, and its policies determined, by a group of prominent senior Orthodox rabbinical figures respected broadly as outstanding scholars of Jewish law and decisors of Jewish policy.

Informed by classical Jewish tradition which teaches that all human life is sacred, and possessed of the firm view that laws which undermine the sanctity of human life send a message that is profoundly dangerous for all of society, Agudath Israel of America speaks out frequently on a broad panoply of public policy issues that arise at the outset and conclusion of human life. At the same time, as a representative of a religious minority community whose constituents rely heavily on the religious freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment, Agudath Israel of America is a staunch advocate of religious liberty for all Americans.

Missouri's legislative finding that human life begins at conception implicates both of these concerns in a manner that, to some extent, creates a dilemma for Agudath Israel of America. On the one hand, Agudath Israel of America heartily welcomes the Court's request that the parties address the question of whether the analytical framework of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), should be "reconsidered and discarded in favor of [a] rational basis test," 57 U.S.L.W. 3442 (Jan. 10, 1989); reconsideration of a decision that has effectively legalized abortion on demand is, in our view, highly appropriate and long overdue. On the other hand, though, any reconsideration of Roe v. Wade, particularly in the context of a state law declaring that human life begins at conception, carries with it the danger that abortions might be legislatively proscribed even where they are mandated by religious belief -- under sinaitic Jewish law, for example, where the mother's life is endangered.

Hence Agudath Israel of America's great interest in this case. The objective of this amicus brief is to articulate a jurisprudential framework that is at once protective of human fetal life yet solicitous of religious freedom.

Through their respective counsel, the parties have consented to the appearance of this amicus.