GEN1143 The Pentateuch does not directly consider intentionally induced abortions.   … That an Israelite parent might consider intentionally aborting a fetus seems almost beyond the moral horizon of the Torah’s original audience.  For in the moral environment where the law was first received, the memory of genocide and infanticide was still fresh Exodus 1:16; every birth was precious.   The Torah vividly articulates the ideals of patriarchal times and the vision of national destiny embedded in those ideals when it voices the loftiest and most sublime blessing to a patriarchal or matriarchal figure in God’s promise:[this verse].   Against this backdrop, the solitary and oblique reference to abortion in Exodus is all the more striking, for it clearly shows that aborticide, even though an assault, is not biblically deemed a homicide—although fatal injury to the expectant mother in such an incident would be.   JHRHV 88