General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Abortion: what is really the issue? [View all]moriah
(8,311 posts)... designed to promote the belief that a man's wife's children were his, nor does it say that it is only to be used if he goes off to war and returns to her newly pregnant or something. It is to be used if she was unsupervised with a man, to appease her husband's jealousy, if there was not hard evidence of adultery (the kind that would get her killed).
The chapter's instructions are not that the procedure will always produce an abortion. More the guys are told that if she committed adultery she will abort, and if not then her body will produce healthy children
It still ran the risk of a woman who often miscarried being accused of adultery and then believed to be adulterous/"cursed", but at that point it was perfectly acceptable for a man to take a second wife. Since it says the curse of being childless is the only punishment given through this method, it seems a guy's option would still be to support her, but take a second wife to give him kids.