Rabbis Oppose Burdensome Ballot Initiatives n New York, Florida

 

Baltimore, MD, November 4, 2024—Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, today announced its opposition to New York Proposal 1, called the Equal Rights Amendment, to the New York State Constitution,  and to Florida’s Proposal 4, an Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion, 23-07. “The New York proposal enshrines unlimited abortion rights into law, and promotes the LGBTQ agenda without limit,” said CJV Rabbinic Circle Chair Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer. It would place ‘trans women’ into women's sports, prisons, and private spaces, with no protections for traumatized women, much less people of faith. It will promote anti-Torah lifestyles, and could even be interpreted to permit minors to undergo destruction of their bodies as ‘sex-change procedures’ without parental consent.” “The Florida initiative is similarly problematic, though focused upon abortion,” added CJV Southern Regional Vice President Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes. “It is particularly disingenuous, implying that it only protects abortion done to save a mother’s life; in actuality, it gives any abortion clinic employee, as compared to a medical doctor, license to decide an abortion is ‘necessary.’ It also replaces parental consent with mere notification if a minor seeks an abortion. So this law is a radical change, but designed to fool voters into thinking it is merely a benign outgrowth of existing provisions.” Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) represents over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis as the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America. A 501(c)3 non-profit, CJV promotes religious liberty, human rights, and classical Jewish ideas in American public policy.