This is precisely the argument that a South Florida synagogue, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, is making in court. This month, the Palm Beach County synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s 15-week abortion ban on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy and freedom of religion, both of which are codified in the state’s constitution. Jewish law, the suit states, affirms that “abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman.”

Rabbi Samantha Frank, a rabbinic fellow at Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., confirmed to me that in Judaism, reproductive justice goes back to the Torah (the Hebrew Bible), specifically the book of Exodus, in which a differentiation is made between the life of a fetus and the life of a pregnant person. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg recently summarized the story that this argument comes from in an essay for The Atlantic:

“Two people are fighting; one accidentally pushes someone who is pregnant, causing a miscarriage. The text outlines the consequences: If only a miscarriage happens, the harm doer is obligated to pay financial damages. If, however, the pregnant person dies, the case is treated as manslaughter. The meaning is clear: The fetus is regarded as potential life, rather than actual life.”....

“Banning abortion is a violation of our religious liberty and ability to fulfill even our religious obligations, the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Rabbi Ruttenberg told me in an email. “The Talmud [the text that serves as the primary source of Jewish law] considers the fetus ‘mere water’ for the first 40 days after conception and part of the pregnant person's body after that – as potential life until birth, not as actual life at conception. Enshrining one specific theology as law is a violation of the Establishment Clause.”