re: #204 HappyWarrior

Yep. That’s another thing. He’s extremely anti choice. I’m not a theologian but my understanding is Judaism takes a much more philosophical pro choice position than not. He’s so eager for Evangelicals to like him that he overlooks his own religion’s tenets and conflates them with Conservative Christianity’s.

Exodus 21:22 et seq — if you assault a pregnant woman in such a way as to cause a miscarriage, but the woman is otherwise unharmed… that’s a misdemeanor. Financial compensation is required. But it’s definitely not murder, and the penalty for killing that fetus is far, far less than the penalty for killing a human being.

Numbers 5:11 et seq — if the husband of a pregnant woman believes he’s not the father, religious law requires she drink a potion and undergo a ritual that’s supposed to reveal God’s verdict on the accusation. If it turns out she really did cheat and get pregnant by someone other than her husband, the pregnancy MUST be terminated. She cannot be allowed to take it to term.

Back in the days before modern medicine, before c-sections were a survivable thing… if a delivery was going very badly and it seemed unlikely to end up with a live mother and live child and a decision had to be made — a Jewish midwife or doctor would cut that half-born child into pieces if that’s what it took to get it out of her. If a choice had to be made between the woman and the child, if there didn’t seem to be a way to save both, then keeping the woman alive was absolutely the higher priority. Every time.