MARK WASHOFSKY

subset of the general requirements to preserve life(pikuah nefesh®') and to save lives that are in danger(hatalah®®). The second rule, derived from a separate text, allows us to stop the rodef even at the cost of his life.** This second rule is necessary, argues R. Haim, since our duty to protect the victim does not in itself warrant the killing of the pursuer. Both lives are precious in God 's sight; after all, whose blood is"redder" than whose?** Thus, even though a rodef threatens another's life, it is only because of a special Toraitically-imposed liability(hiyuv) that we may kill him, if need be, to save his intended victim.

In this way, Soloveitchik explains Rambam 's designation of the fetus as a pursuer. Although the Talmudic sugya seems explicitly to reject this label, saying that the mother"is being pursued from Heaven," the fetus indeed qualifies as a rodef under the first of the two rules which govern that concept: it endangers the mother, whose life deserves protection. The phrase"she is being pursued from Heaven" comes simply to remove from the fetus the hiyuv, the second aspect of the law of the pursuer which permits us to sacrifice the rodef to save the victim. Thus, the fetus is a rodef in only one of the two senses of that concept. If so, why are we entitled, according to M. Ohalot 7:6, to destroy it while it is yet in utero in order to save its mother? The answer flows from a similar"shnei dinim" analysis of the concept of pikuah nefesh. The duty to preserve life also consists of two rules: the equal status of all persons, so that"one life does not override another", and the permission to set aside virtually all the commandments of the Torah in order to save human life. There is much debate in the halakhic literature over the status of the fetus as a nefesh with respect to this second rule: is the fetus enough of a nefesh, for example, to require that we violate the prohibitions against labor on Shabbat in order to save it?** But by ruling that the fetus"is like a pursuer," Rambam declares it is indeed a nefesh under the first rule and enjoys a claim to equal protection. Its life may not be set aside on behalf of another except in a case of dangerous childbirth, when it can be considered a rodef. It is the fetus, and not the mother, who is the aggressor in this case because she, a"full legal person"(nefesh gamur) to whom pikuah nefesh pertains in both its aspects, takes precedence over the incomplete nefesh of the fetus. Upon emergence,

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