Rape, Abortion, Murder, and Other General Nasty Ambiguities: Addendum

I suppose I should, for the benefit of the morons who will eventually find my previous post and scream about how abortion is murder, expand on how it isn't (and here is where I wish I could use Comic Sans):


  First, we must ask the question "What is murder?"  Is it the intentional killing of another human?  In that case, wouldn't soldiers all be guilty of it?  Why are they never prosecuted for killing enemy soldiers?  Why aren't the commanders?  Is someone who kills another person in defense of either themselves or another - especially when all available and reasonable non-lethal attempts fail - a murderer?  I highly doubt that anyone would say that we should prosecute soldiers who kill in times of war, or that someone who defends their family, neighbors, or stranger from some freakshow with a deadly weapon is a murderer.  So we must choose a different definition.

It is for those reasons that most dictionaries (and people) define it as something similar to "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." This presents two problems for those who would claim that abortion is murder: they must prove that the fetus is human, and it must be unlawful.  As I have already covered the "it's a baby" angle (see the previous post) I shall deal with the second here.

To break it down into it's components for easier description, a murder is the:

1.  unlawful
2. premeditated
3. killing of
4. one human
5. by another human

The two components at issue when dealing with abortion are 1 and 4, and we shall only be dealing with 1 in this discussion.  Assuming we are dealing with the United States alone, abortion is not murder because it does not fulfill the component of being illegal.  

"But it's against GAWD'S LAW!" I hear you complain.  Fucking irrelevant.  This is the United States.  As much as you dominionist theocratic fuckwits may want to believe otherwise, our laws are not based on the bible or the christian faith, and we are not - repeat, fucking NOT - a Christian Nation.

"But 95% of this country is Christian! And so were the Founders!"

In both cases, so fucking what? Firstly, having a christian majority only makes this a "nation of christians" and not a "christian nation".  I want you to think about the difference between these two phrases and what they imply. There's a law in this country, it reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  This does not simply apply to whatever specific one of the 20,000+ branches of christianity you personally belong to, and not just to every branch of christianity, but to all religions, and to the nonreligious.  That is how the founders wrote it, and that is how we interpret it today.  It protects us all, or it protects NONE of us.

Also, you should stop listening to David Barton and his ilk:  if we WERE under biblical law in this country, he would be stoned to death for his repeated lies about the founding of this country.

"B-but..." SHUT YOUR DUMBASS FUCKING FACE AND LET ME FINISH!!!

As for religious liberty, not all religions believe abortion is murder in all cases.  Jews, for example, believe that, should the fetus threaten the health of the mother, it should be treated as a parasite.  Banning all abortions across the board would violate their religious liberty, not to mention put several thousand (if not million) mothers at risk.

Moving on from the religious issue, there is really no reason, unless the fetus IS human (which was dealt with previously) to ban abortion across the board, as there are too many health issues that may require it, as - again - discussed before.  

I restate:  Abortion is legal, and therefore is not murder.  Whether or not it is killing another human being is a point for debate, and I'd much rather you do it over here.