Rabbinic Literature
The Torah says little about the status or treatment of the embryo or fetus. Indeed, only one crucial Biblical law establishes a rule about the killing of an embryo or fetus. Specifically, Exodus 21:22-25 states:
When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman so that her children depart (yatsa), but no other damage (ason) ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Under Jewish Biblical exegesis, abortion is not deemed murder. Instead, unintentional abortion is a form of damages subject to monetary compensation. Conversely, the killing of the mother—the other damage (ason)—is murder.
Read more about this topic: Judaism And Abortion
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)