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Included in the cases of life-saving taking precedence over the laws of Yom Kippur is that of an expectant mother whose unborn child smells food. If the resulting desire to taste that food is not satisfied, the lives of both mother and child are in danger. The mishna therefore tells us that she must be given to eat from that food until she recovers.
The saving of life overrides any commandment. Our Daf (Yoma 82a) explains that nothing stands in the way of “pikuach nefesh”, saving a life, other than the cardinal sins of idol worship, illicit relations or murder.
An Israeli study found that during the Day of Atonement, Jews had twice as many preterm deliveries.
To investigate why, they matched data on deliveries at the hospital from 1988 to 2012 with the Jewish calendar. Of the mothers, 388 were Jewish and 357 were Bedouin. Forty-seven, or 6.3 percent, of the births were premature, or earlier than 37 weeks after conception.