The short is this woman was 14 weeks pregnant, had a blood clot and died, but the hospital saw that the baby was still alive, resituated her body, and put it on life support to be an incubator for the child, with intent to unplug her once the baby is mature and is delivered.
While my faith considers a child to be alive from the moment of conception, I was interested how being born from a dead body would be viewed and classified so I spent some time doing research on this subject in the Talmud (religious law) and found some fascinating stuff. I don’t usually find stuff humorous in religion, but this did blow my mind.
So first a little back story to help with understanding content: we have laws of food called Kashrut, which define what is Kosher (clean) and can be eaten or used for ritual (wine blessings etc.…). In order to make meat Kosher it has to meet a set of rules – has to be from a land animal that has cloven hoof and chews cud, water animal that has scales, gills and fins and any bird not mentioned in Leviticus 11:13 and Deuteronomy 14:12 (almost any bird). Land animals and birds also have to be slaughtered in a specific way so that the animal feels no fear or pain and the method is described in the laws of Shkhita. A person who is a Kosher butcher allowed to slaughter animals and keep them Kosher is called a Shoikhet and is a Rabbi who has spent many years studying and then apprenticing before he is allowed to do this himself. Usually Shoikhet has his own set of very sharp knives that they prize and maintain and will talk to you for hours bout them.
Now back to the story, so I found a chapter describing an argument between rabbinical teachers from about 1000 years ago about a hypothetical situation and this argument leads to the establishment of a law. The argument was about this:
What if a Shoikhet slaughters a cow and then finds a live calf inside. The decision was made that since the cow was already properly slaughtered and made Kosher than the calf by default is also already Kosher and does not need to be slaughtered by a Shoikhet to be Kosher. Moreover the calf was to be considered UNDEAD!!!!! Since he was delivered from the dead body of its mother. Then they went further and said what would happen if the two such Undead Cows were to mate and have offspring, all of the offspring would also be by default Undead Kosher Cows!
So now back to the beginning, I am wondering if from this law the baby born from this dead woman on life support will also by religious law is to be considered Undead. I need to speak to few rabbi’s and see if there were cases like this before, but from my understanding now, this baby will be a real life Zombie.
