That it is a monetary fine is really crucial as one of two ways of establishing that the Mosaic law that Christians leverage for their legalism does not consider an unborn fetus a person.
First, as noted, the fine for a miscarriage is monetary only if no harm comes to the woman. If the woman is hurt, the Mosaic concept of reciprocal justice (eye for eye, etc), which was likely borrowed from the code of Hammurabi, kicks in. The death of an unborn fetus has no reciprocal punishment because that form of justice applies to people.
The second way of establishing that an unborn fetus is not considered a person in the hebrew bible is right in the second version of the creation story in Genesis 2:7
then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being
(emphasis mine)
So here first, and in various other places in the bible (and in the broader Greco-Roman culture in which the nascent Christianity would later form), life began at first breath.
That it is a monetary fine is really crucial as one of two ways of establishing that the Mosaic law that Christians leverage for their legalism does not consider an unborn fetus a person.
First, as noted, the fine for a miscarriage is monetary only if no harm comes to the woman. If the woman is hurt, the Mosaic concept of reciprocal justice (eye for eye, etc), which was likely borrowed from the code of Hammurabi, kicks in. The death of an unborn fetus has no reciprocal punishment because that form of justice applies to people.
The second way of establishing that an unborn fetus is not considered a person in the hebrew bible is right in the second version of the creation story in Genesis 2:7
So here first, and in various other places in the bible (and in the broader Greco-Roman culture in which the nascent Christianity would later form), life began at first breath.