Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought

PREGNANCY REDUCTION Women suffering from certain medical problems that prevent them from becoming pregnant because they do not experience normal ovulation can now be treated with fertility drugs that may result in the production of a multiple number of ova. Similarly, women who experience normal ovulation but fail to become pregnant because of other problems such as a blockage of the Fallopian tubes may be able to conceive and bear multiple fetuses by means of in vitro fertilization. Since the statistical probabilty of successful implantation of any single ovum fertilized in this manner is relatively low, fertility specialists treat such women with drugs that cause production of multiple ova. As many as eight or nine ova may be produced in a single cycle, thus enabling the physician to implant a multiple number of fertilized ova and thereby increase the chances for a successful pregnancy. In some instances most or even all of the ova may become implanted in the uterus with the result that a woman who had heretofore been experiencing fertilty problems may actually become pregnant with a multiple number of fetuses. KASHRUT CERTIFICATION In the Iyar 5754 issue of Ha-Pardes the editor has reprinted a letter authored by R. Moses Feinstein many years ago. The letter, as published in Ha-Pardes, is dated 9 Elul 5733. The identical letter appears in Iggerot Mosheh, Hoshen Mishpat, II, no. 4, sec. 1, bearing the date Kislev 5739. The communication was addressed to the administrators of a communal kashrut supervision organization. The letter was written at the behest of several rabbis who, for a period of time, had supervised and granted a private hekhsher, or certificate ofkashrut, to a slaughterhouse. The rabbis approached Rabbi Feinstein with a complaint in which they asserted that the supervisory agency in question refused to allow establishments under its jurisdiction to make use of meat originating in the slaughterhouse supervised by the complainants. Those rabbis alleged that such refusal was nothing more than a boycott designed to put economic pressure upon the proprietors of the slaughterhouse to transfer kashrut supervision from the rabbis with whom they had a long-standing arrangement to the supervisory agency itself.