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From: hfavr@mtuxo.UUCP (a.reed)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Jewish concept of "nefesh"
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Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 12:28:29 EST
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Posted: Fri Feb 14 12:28:29 1986
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>>(Adam Reed) 
>> 1. The Oral Tradition prescribes 30 days from birth before a newborn is
>> 	considered a nefesh. A newborn who dies without having lived on
>> 	earth for 30 days is not mourned.

>(M. Krumbein)
>As far as I remember, a person who kills a healthy child is liable
>to capital punishment, though the child was  just born.

(Adam Reed)
Capital punishment was extremely rare in practice - recall that the
Talmud is very harsh on a Sanhedrin that would authorize an execution
once per generation. Given its rarity in practice, liability to capital
punishment was used as a mark of strong moral disapproval, and applied
to a very wide variety of offenses, including such things as working on
the Shabat. Capital punishment was never applied to consensual abortion,
indicating that abortion, although unquestionably an offense, is less
reprehensible than, e.g., working on the Shabat. Moreover, it was not
applicable to infanticide unless the infant was healthy enough to have
a good chance of eventually becoming a person. This indicates that
the relevant factor is the future potential for becoming a person,
rather than biological life per se.

>Calling abortion (on demand) murder (or close to it) is not precisely 
>foreign to Jewish tradition.

Nothing is so foreign to Jewish tradition as reliance on emotionally
charged slogans, such as "abortion is murder", in place of reasoned
argument. I find that for the most part, the Jewish tradition regards
abortion as an offense for the same reason it regards failure to have
regular marital relations as an offense: because it prevents a potential
person from coming into being. This is materially different from murder,
which is the destruction of an already existing person.

					Adam Reed (ihnp4!mtuxo!hfavr)