Sotah

Richard Hanania has been getting into it with the pro-life movement lately, saying that Republicans have completely lost the single-female vote because of Choice. This much is true (used to be more true). He advises Republicans to abandon the issue entirely, maybe even run against it.

It's not like we can start a theocracy! - or even want one. Why oh why can single females not, like, get over it. Why oh why can they not just trust us?

Some pro-lifers deny they actually intend, no-exceptions. To that, they need to explain why they use the term "murder". If I can see the motte behind the bailey, then so can others.

Christians, in particular, claim the Bible told us so. This blog can, on other topics, be faulted for not checking. I like to think it has some credibility on, say, Near Eastern precedent for halakha. Christians for our part have opposed The Procedure for feminist reasons; the Christian Empire came up with a legal-fiction of "ensoulment".

Ancient Jew Review points out that maybe the Christian stance is not biblical. The main argument, which I didn't know, was the Sotah ritual.

Sotah was one of those trial-by-ordeal Iron Age thingies [UPDATE 2/17/24: from pre-Leviticus-5?]. If you, Jonadab ben Ephraim, suspected your wife of stepping out on you, you could challenge her to drink some Bitter Herbs. If she does and nothing unusual issues forth, she didn't cheat (alternatively she did but nothing happened; which doesn't count for what counts).

On the fence-around-Torah principle, the woman consents to Sotah - perhaps not as much as the man, but we'll get to this. By Torah, adultery is sufficient cause to execute the foetus. If consensual adultery suffices... try nonconsensual. The wife might then insist on the Sotah cocktail, as she's denouncing her defiler.

The Judaic courts would assuredly judge the woman's claim. False testimony is bad too! But if she claimed justly, then Jews would never judge her Choice.

Why should Christians?

ROMANS 12/15: For the other side of the Latin tradition, here's Carrier.