Many leading Modern Orthodox Rabbis and Organizations were part of the original pro-life movement fighting in response against the 1970 NY abortion law, and for legislative vote repealing it two years later.(Vetoed by Gov.Rockefeller)
In 1970 when NY was voting in favor of abortion, Nash Kestenbaum, then president of Young Israel , personally lobbied against the pro abortion law. Right after the law was passed, Rabbi Joseph Karasick,president of the OU, and Rabbi Bernard L. Berzon, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, issued a statement jointly stating “In Judaism, the life of an unborn child is sacred, and only when It is a threat to the mother can the moral issue of abortion be resolved. For each person to decide arbitrarily, on the basis of economics or convenience, whether a fetus is to survive is literally for man to play God and is religiously blasphemous and socially destructive.”
In 1972 the RCA’s policy‐making executive board of 80 members unanimously urged repealing of NY’s abortion legalization law . These were Rabbis who had been practicing when abortion had been banned and, based on their actual experience with abortion bans, did not share contemporary panic over the potential that statutory abortion ban would limit halachically acceptable abortions