Page 36 - The Circle of Life
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married in community of property. That comes from Roman times and was
changed by an Act to give her more freedom.
In the second example, and I like this dictum, our Roman forefathers forbid you
as a husband to give his wife gifts. Thus you are breaking the law at her
birthday, Christmas and I hope in between too. How is that you say? Why did
they create this law? It is silly or is it? They had good reason and the best of
intentions. The Romans believed a man should not buy the love his wife should
give to him for free. Thus no gifts legally!
Makes sense if you think of it. Of course none of my previous wives took kindly
to this very reasonable explanation so I broke it all the time, sadly to no avail.
The point is that it is still law even if ancient and would not fit in today’s society
as much as certain men would want it to be. Luckily my American Patriot is not
subjected to Roman law as an American Citizen or so she claims. I am not very
clever but I am not stupid either. I get it and break it whenever I can. You know
she is known far and wide as Mrs Always Right.
Then thirdly there came a remarkably clever lawyer who wanted to bring the
Roman monstrum principal into modern law. Let us look at what happened. This
fellow defended a woman accused of organising abortions which at that time was
against the law. Abortions could be obtained legally under strict circumstances
(rape, incest, danger to the mother etc) but this was not one of them.
Consequently in court he based his defense on Roman law which said something
like “if the child is born in such a deformed way to look like a monster it can be
killed legally." Thus a foetus looks like a monster and thus be killed legally or so
he argued with much vigour. Like all good arguments it made sense to the court
who in fact agreed and then on appeal the verdict was turned over because you
cannot import law from a different era just like that. Today this makes no
difference for abortions are legal.
* And now we have many European woman arriving here for abortions since it is
illegal in their own countries. Sad really! My personal feeling is that there was
nothing wrong with the old Act (only for rape & incest etc) and this is murder.
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