1.
A woman who immediately sees blood as a result of
intercourse, meaning in the time span it takes for her to get her hand under
the pillow or blanket and perform an examination with an eid is
prohibited from her husband is permitted to have intercourse 3 times. If
on three consecutive occasions she sees blood and even more so if the blood
is on his eid, is prohibited from cohabiting with this husband but rather
must get divorced and remarry another person. If the same thing happens,
she divorces him and marries a third man and if she continues to see blood as a
result of intercourse she is prohibited from marrying anyone else until she has
a test. And there are those who say that we are not experts at determining
what is "as a result of intercourse" because we do not know the
actual length of time referred to. Therefore, we consider bleeding to be
"as a result of intercourse" if it happened near the time of
intercourse we consider it as being "as a result of intercourse" and
she is prohibited to her husband. These three sightings must be
consecutive, if they are not she is not prohibited from her husband.
There is no difference if she sees three times at the beginning of her marriage
or if she commenced this type of bleeding at a later time. All of this
applies only if the blood is seen close to the time of intercourse; if it is
not she is not prohibited to her husband and is permitted to him again after
she becomes pure and she is assigned the status of one who does not have a vesses.
Rare Event –
Bleeding from Intercourse
The analysis of this Siman
is a bit abbreviated both because of the rarity of the occurrence of the issue
it addresses as well as halachic
complexities involved.
In general, this is an area in which we try to find whatever
leniencies we can so that we do not break up marriages unnecessarily. If at the time of the bleeding from
intercourse she did not have vesses kavua
and subsequently established one that is based on the passage of time, we do
not require divorce. This is because the
menstruation because of intercourse is considered a non-fixed vesses based on a physical event, and is
ignored if the woman has a fixed vesses. Siman
189 explains these laws in more detail.
Not everyone agrees, however.
Another view is that the bleeding is an indication of an illness or
physical defect which would then not be ignored even if she had a vesses kavua. Most poskim
follow the first view.
There is also a dispute about whether or not the first
instance counts as part of the 3.
Additionally, in practice today we do not often force divorce
because of blood from intercourse.
Generally, there are various medical options to control the bleeding. Therefore, in a real situation, one needs to
involve appropriate doctors as well as qualified poskim.
There are those who hold that the length of time that is
meant by “time span” is as long as 30 minutes. However, this is an area where
one can certainly be lenient and apply a standard of about 10 minutes for this
purpose. Others appear to have established time limits
of 5 minutes or even as short as ¼ - ½ of a minute. An additional leniency is to require the
couple perform a bedikah prior to
intercourse as well (i.e., within a ½ hour) in order to ascertain that the
bleeding actually did begin during intercourse.
Another outcome of considering bleeding from intercourse as a
vesses is that if she were to become
pregnant from the 3rd act, during the period of her pregnancy and
nursing we would permit intercourse because vestos
are suspended in those times. Once
again, those also argue with the assessment of bleeding as a vesses will disagree here as well.