THE ANCIENTS & THE FETUS

I have written before that the Old Testament, specifically Exodus 21:22, does not consider abortion to be murder. Prof. John M. Riddle's book, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, makes the claim that this attitude was common in the Middle East.

From pages 70-71, hardover edition:

From all indications, the ancient peoples of West Asia and Egypt believed that life began at birth. There is not even a hint that the ancients regarded a fetus as a human persona. Quite the contrary. In fact, the property rights of a fetus were recognized and ascribed to the father of the family. A Sumerian law (ca. 1800 B.C.E.) reads:

If (a man accidentally) buffeted a woman of free-citizen class and caused her to have a miscarriage, he must pay ten shekels of silver. If (a man deliberately) struck a woman of free-citizen class and caused her to have a miscarriage, he must pay one-third mina of silver.²³

One-third mina is twice the value of ten shekels, thus a deliberate act is a doubly egregious offense. Hammurabi's laws (1728–1686 B.C.E.) permitted the same recovery (ten shekels) for one causing a miscarriage, and five shekels for a commoner's daughter. If a slave's owner caused a slave to lose a fetus through a miscarriage, he was fined two shekels.²⁴

[SNIP]

Sumerian, Lipit-istar, and Middle Assyrian laws maintain the same principles as those in the Hammurabic code (except that the penalty in the Middle Assyrian law is death for taking the life of a fetus by delivering a blow to the mother).²⁹ The latter is the only law that could be said to protect the fetus itself, but that interpretation would be in-consistent with the practice of exposure or infanticide. A deformed, abnormal, or even unwanted child could be killed without legal sanction. The law's purpose may have been to protect a community from being robbed of a healthy child.³⁰More likely, the laws protected a male's right to have a child he sired.

FOOTNOTES:

²³ Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, 2d ed., ed. J. B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1955), p. 525 (hereinafter cited as ANET).

²⁴ Hammurabi, Laws, 209-214 (Pritchard ed., p. 162).

²⁸For a review of the ancient West Asian laws, see Stephen D. Ricks, "Abortion," in Anchor Bible Dictionary 1 (1992): 31-32.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 31;ANET, pp. 525 (Sumerian Laws 4.1 2), 181, 184-185 (Middle Assyrian 50).

³⁰ Ricks, "Abortion," p. 31; Emiel Eyben, "Family Planning in Graeco-Roman Antiquity," Ancient Society 11 (1980-1981): 81 if.