Ethicists, theologians and political activists have all asked the important question: Is a fetus a person? How they answer has real implications for the lives of people who can get pregnant and those who love them.
On today’s daf, however, the rabbis ask what might seem to be an even more basic question: Is a fetus a human?
This may not be a live question for us, but it’s clear it was to the rabbis. To explore this question, today’s daf quotes a mishnah from Tractate Niddah that we’ll read in its own context in a little less than a year’s time. My translation draws on not only the standard printed Vilna edition of the Talmud, but also slight variations attested in surviving handwritten manuscripts.
A woman who discharges something like fish, grasshoppers, creeping things and reptiles: If there is blood, she is impure. If not, she is pure.
A woman who discharges something like a kind of domesticated animal, wild animal or bird: Whether (the suspected species of what she expels) is impure or pure, if it is male, she stays (in a state of childbirth impurity for the time period set) for a male. If it is female, she stays (in a state of childbirth impurity for the time period set) for a female. And if its sex is unknown, she stays (in a state of childbirth impurity for the time period set) for a male and a female — according to Rabbi Meir.
According to Rabbi Meir, when a woman experiences a pregnancy loss, the first question to ask is: What species was her fetus? What did it look like? Rabbi Meir uses the language of likeness to describe visual similarities — which was the primary way that the rabbis determined what something actually was. In fact, at least one manuscript of the mishnah leaves out the word “like” entirely and describes a woman as giving birth to one of these other creatures, with no couching language.
Rabbi Meir and his colleagues clearly believe a human woman can be pregnant with a wide range of creatures. If the expelled fetus appears to be a mammal or a bird, the woman must observe the appropriate rituals of purification. But if the fetus appears to be piscine, insectoid or reptilian, she does not experience childbirth impurity (only menstrual impurity, and then only if she bleeds while expelling it). It seems that birthing a mammal or a bird is a “real” birth, while birthing a fish or insect is not.
Rabbi Meir’s outlook might seem bizarre to modern readers. We know that human women can only be pregnant with human fetuses. But the rabbis did not know this. And this is because fetuses in earlier stages of development do not necessarily look human. After all, how many future parents looking at a sonogram have joked that they are expecting an alien?
Indeed, there are still human communities that share this belief, that humans can be pregnant with animals, with the rabbis. Anthropologist Lynn Morgan writes that the Arunta of Central Australia are “perfectly convinced” that some aborted fetuses are the young of a different species, such as a kangaroo, which “by mistake got inside the woman.” She further writes that in Bang Chan, Thailand, women have related episodes of giving birth to everything from gold and jewels to a monkey and a fish’s stomach. So the rabbinic belief that humans can be pregnant with non-humans is not unique to the rabbis.
Rabbi Meir’s position does not win the debate. The mishnah concludes:
And the sages say: Every miscarriage which does not have the form of a human being is not a valid offspring.
Unless a fetus appears humanoid, the rituals of childbirth impurity are not operative. The woman does not observe these rituals for a non-human, even if what she expelled was thought to be a mammal or a bird.
Notably, while the sages disagree with Rabbi Meir’s assessment of the woman’s ritual status, they don’t disagree with Rabbi Meir about whether a woman can be pregnant with something like a fish, an insect or a goat.
Very often, we read the Talmud and are amazed at how similar our world is to the one the rabbis describe. They too dealt with the challenges of living in a religiously and economically diverse world. They too dealt with governments that had significant control over their lives. They too were seeking inspiration and meaning in the study of Torah, and in Jewish community. But today’s daf reminds us that the rabbis were also fundamentally different from us: They had a different scientific worldview and a different understanding of human reproduction — with all the social and ritual implications those differences entail.
Read all of Chullin 71 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 10, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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