Choshen Mishpat 405 – No a pregnant non-Jew is not like a pregnant animal.

Choshen Mishpat 405 – No, a pregnant non-Jew is not like a pregnant animal.

The Quote

A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal.

— Choshen Mishpat 405

The Reality

This “quote” is false.  It’s an inference made from a (probably purposeful) mistranslation.

Choshen Mishpat is not a part of the Talmud.  It is part of a later work, the Shulchan Aruch, composed about a millennium later.  Choshen Mishpat covers laws regarding business, loans, civil procedure, and damages, among other topics.  

Choshen Mishpat 405 deals with the laws of an ox that gores a person and the civil damages that may result from it.  

Nowhere in this chapter is any distinction made between Jews and non-Jews.  The only place where any sort of distinction between anyone is made is in paragraph 3.  

Translation:

If the ox gored a woman and her children emerged, the owner would be exempt from paying for the value of the children, even if it had been warned with respect to goring. If the ox gored a pregnant maidservant and her children emerged, however, it is as if the ox gored a pregnant animal, and we would appraise how much the maidservant was worth originally and how much her value depreciated, and the owner would pay for half the damage in the case of an unwarned animal and full damage in the case of a warned animal.  (Translation from Wikiquote)

The only time any distinction is raised here is when the person who was gored is a maidservant (i.e., slave).  There is no distinction whatsoever, however, between Jew and non-Jew.  The law would be the same, whether the person was Jewish or non-Jewish.  Only by purposely mistranslating “maidservant” to “non-Jew” can you possibly come up with such an inference.

Summary:

This “quote” is based on a mistranslation.  There is no distinction here between Jews and non-Jews.