GEN522 In the Code of Hammurabi compensation for an abortion of the type described in Exodus [21:22 – AJL] is dependent on the status of the parties, and the death of the woman is punished by the execution of the offender’s daughter.  The moral thrust of the Mosaic law stands out vividly against this contrasting background.  Here we see the expectant mother identified explicitly as the potential victim in the law’s concern.  Treatment of feticide as a homicide emerges as precisely the kind of disproportion [this verse] that the biblical law seeks to correct Exodus 21:20, 26, etc. when it provides that damages shall be proportioned to the gravity of injuries sustained Exodus 21:23-25, and not the status of the parties Deuteronomy 1:17, that homicide belongs in a separate and restricted category of offense Leviticus 24:17, Exodus 21:12-14, and that “Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children for parents, but each individual for his own offense” Deuteronomy 24:16, cf. Exodus 21:28, Leviticus 4:3, Numbers 9:13, 12:11, 16:22.  JHRHV 88