Fetal Positions: The Talmudic Construction of Personhood

Fetal Positions explores how ancient Jews in Sasanian Babylonia weighed an issue that remains all too timely: the legal status of the fetus. Sara Ronis uses the Babylonian Talmud as a springboard to ask a range of questions about the rabbis’ multiple approaches to the fetus: In what ways do the rabbis construct the fetus as a legal object? A legal subject? What kinds of rights and responsibilities does a fetus have? When is a fetus “just” a fetus and when is it something more?

Ronis analyzes...