The Breath of Life
by Robert Becker
Life Begins at First Breath
Life Ends with Last Breath
Jewish tradition teaches
that breath begins life.
The father whispers the first breath
in his newborn child’s ear
just as God breathed first life into Adam.
Yahweh is the Hebrew name for God
not necessarily spoken
but breathed, sometime whispered,
Inhale (yah), Exhale (Weh).
Inhale (yah), Exhale (Weh).
Let the breath of life enter in to our
understanding of the sanctity of abortion,
of moral, legal and religious Choice,
that God’s breath decides when
life begins and when life ends.
Even in the time of Jesus
laws were conceived by men,
laws held against women,
laborers, sick, non-Jews,
and those less fortunate.
Jesus advocated against
many of those laws and practices
and their profiteering in God’s name,
laws that male religious leaders
used against people of God.
“If every time men had sex, they risked death,
physical disability, social shunning,
a life altering interruption of their education or career,
and the sudden life-long responsibility for another being,
I think they’d expect a choice in the matter.”
If every time a man raped a woman
he was convicted and forced to pay restitution
for the trauma, care for the child until adulthood
or an abortion to save the sanctity of the woman,
I think they’d expect a choice in the matter.
If the courts in their infinite wisdom
were concerned at all for justice for everyone
other than dominion and profiteering
of a white male legal system,
I expect there’d be choice in the matter.
When a President can openly abuse women,
when a Supreme Court Justice can abuse women,
when Senators can abuse women,
when a Priest can abuse young boys,
when a Father can abuse wife and children,
The Life of the Abused as they new it Ends!
They deserve a Choice!