Change of status between the act of committing the offense and the “perpetration” of the offense
Hello Rabbi Michi,
Following a discussion with friends about a Hori ruling , which dealt with the issue of harming a fetus that was born alive and later died (I discovered that there is a legal principle accepted in several legal systems called the Born alive rule ), I wondered whether the halakha refers to a parallel process in which a person commits an offense or causes harm, and then the object of the offense/harm changes status in a way that would result in a change in punishment.
An example I was thinking of – a man beats his Canaanite slave, which puts him in a position of being obligated to die if the slave dies immediately or in a position of being exempt if the slave dies after a day or two. What happens if that man frees the slave (who converts and becomes a kosher Jew) after a day, and then – say after a week – the slave dies as a direct result of the beating? At the time of the beating, the master is not obligated, and at the time of the death he caused the death of a kosher Israelite.
Does the rabbi know of a reference in halakhic law to a similar situation?
He was born dead, underwent resuscitation, and then died for good.
If I understood the rule correctly, then causing harm or death is only prohibited to a living person. And if you harm a fetus, there is no punishment unless there are consequences for its condition when it was born alive. In this case, it was born dead and was revived, and the court ruled that it is the same as if it was born alive, and therefore the harm while it was a fetus requires punishment.
I didn’t understand what exactly you’re looking for. What change in the baby are you talking about: its birth (transformation from a fetus to a baby) or its resuscitation after birth (from a dead baby to a living baby). Or perhaps the transition from a living baby to its final death?
None of this seems to me like the principle you are talking about. When the baby was revived after birth, it was determined that he was alive, and harming the fetus constituted harming a living person. This is not a change in status that operates retroactively, but because it is a consequential offense, it is necessary to examine whether the necessary consequence was indeed there. The change in status does not change the punishment, but reveals retroactively that he was alive from the beginning (because a dead person who can be revived is alive. The resuscitation revealed that he was dead and can be revived).
Therefore I don’t understand the question.
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