Porneia and Jewish Law

In researching the word porneia, fornication and Jewish Law I came across a couple things that I thought were interesting:


Regarding married sexuality:

"Sex is the woman's right, not the man's. A man has a duty to give his wife sex regularly and to ensure that sex is pleasurable for her. He is also obligated to watch for signs that his wife wants sex, and to offer it to her without her asking for it. The woman's right to sexual intercourse is referred to as onah, and is one of a wife's three basic rights (the others are food and clothing), which a husband may not reduce."

Regarding birth control:

"It is well-established that methods that destroy the seed or block the passage of the seed are not permitted, thus condoms are not permitted for birth control. However, the pill is well-recognized as an acceptable form of birth control under Jewish Law."

Regarding abortion:

"Jewish Law not only permits, but in some circumstances requires abortion. Where the mother's life is in jeopardy because of the unborn child, abortion is mandatory.
"An unborn child has the status of "potential human life" until the majority of the body has emerged from the mother. Potential human life is valuable, and may not be terminated casually, but it does not have as much value as a life in existence. The Talmud makes no bones about this: it says quite bluntly that if the fetus threatens the life of the mother, you cut it up within her body and remove it limb by limb if necessary, because its life is not as valuable as hers. But once the greater part of the body has emerged, you cannot take its life to save the mother's, because you cannot choose between one human life and another."

And regarding pre-marital sex:

"Many people are surprised to learn that the Torah does not prohibit premarital sex. I challenge you to find any passage in the Jewish scriptures that forbits a man from having consensual sexual relations with any woman he could legally marry.... Nor is there any passage that requires a man to marry a woman after having consensual sexual relations with her."

**Source taken from JewishVirtualLibrary.org, a division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.