Tuesday, June 28, 2022

What

 


about their "religious liberty?"

Is it not as important as others "religious liberty?"


Some Jewish groups blast the end of Roe as a violation of their religious beliefs


"Interpretations vary across Judaism, but some religious Jews believe that a fetus is part of the parent's body and that a baby is only considered a person once it takes its first breath."

"According to the Women's Rabbinic Network, some of the religion's most sacred texts view a fetus as a soul only once it's born."

"Therefore, forcing someone to carry a pregnancy that they do not want or that endangers their life is a violation of Jewish law because it prioritizes a fetus over the living adult who is pregnant," the group said in a statement."


Exodus 21:22

If men who are fighting strike a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband demands and as the court allows. 


Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22-25) A personal injury peculiar to women--a hurt producing miscarriage--is here considered. The miscarriage might cost the woman her life, in which case the man who caused it was to suffer death.

(Exodus 21:23); or it might have no further ill result than the loss of the child. In this latter case the penalty was to be a fine, assessed by the husband with the consent of the judge (Exodus 21:22). 

The death penalty, where the woman died, is clearly excessive, and probably belongs to the pre-Mosaic legislation, which required "life for life" in every case.


(The woman's life is in this situation is obviously considered more important than the child she is carrying)


(22) If men strive, and hurt a woman with child.--It is assumed that this hurt would probably take place through the interference of a pregnant wife in some strife wherein her husband was engaged. It would almost certainly be accidental.

And yet no mischief follow--i.e., no further mischief--nothing beyond the loss of the child.

(22, 23) Life for life, eye for eye.--It is a reasonable conjecture that the law of retaliation was much older than Moses, and accepted by him as tolerable rather than devised as rightful. The law itself was very widely spread. Traces of it are found in India, in Egypt, among the Greeks, and in the laws of the Twelve Tables. Aristotle says that the Pythagoreans approved it, and that it was believed to be the rule by which Rhadamanthus administered justice in the other world. There is, prima facie, a semblance of exact rectitude and equality about it which captivates rude minds, and causes the adoption of the rule generally in an early condition of society. Theoretically, retaliation is the exactest and strictest justice; but in practice difficulties arise. How is the force of a blow to be measured? How are exactly similar burns and wounds to be inflicted? Is eye to be given for eye when the injurer is a one-eyed man? And, again, is it expedient for law to multiply the number of mutilated citizens in a community? Considerations of these kinds cause the rule to be discarded as soon as civilisation reaches a certain point, and tend generally to the substitution of a money compensation, to be paid to the injured party by the injurer. The present passage sanctioned the law of retaliation in principle, but authorised its enforcement in a single case only. In a later part of the Mosaic code the application was made universal (Leviticus 24:17-21; Deuteronomy 19:21). . . .



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