Walter Hinteler wrote:Sofia wrote:Partial birth abortion= legalized murder.
Capital punishment= legalized murder.
Murder is the act of killing another human being with "malice aforethought".
Malice aforethought is defined to be the intent to kill or to inflict bodily injury, either express or implied.
Legal, established by or founded upon law or official or accepted rules.
Murder is illegal in almost every society and actually can't ever be legal qua definitionem.
Asherman wrote:Now as to how the law would regard abortion. Until recent times abortion was a separate crime, and was not regarded as homicide. The reason is that in the Common Law one doesn't become "human" in a legal sense until after birth. Hence, the corpus delicti for homicide didn't exist. The progress of medical science and evolving public sentiment has in recent times cause a re-evaluation of what when a fetus becomes legally "human". The standard when I was in law school was that the fetus had to be viable outside the womb to be legally "human". That was a fairly clear distinction and for many years it served well. However, now significant numbers of the public demand "legal" status for embryos virtually from the time the sperm impregnates the egg. Pandora's Box is open, and we will have controversy into the indefinite future.
If the abortion, at whatever stage, is sanctioned by law, then no murder has taken place whether the embryo/fetus is "human", or not. Even if we accept the impregnated egg as "human", the abortion is no more than sanctioned homicide. Since the Supreme Court has sanctioned abortion laws, no abortion carried out within the constraints of a jurisdiction's abortion law is murder. That could change. If the Supreme Court reversed itself and adopted different legal standards abortion might no longer even be sanctioned homicide. To adopt the extreme definition of what is legally a human-being, and striking down existing abortion laws, the Court might eliminate ALL abortions (even some birth control techniques), except those that might be justified as "self-defense" to protect the life of the mother. I believe that is highly unlikely, and would be counter-productive to the Public welfare.
I can't figure out how to adequately parse Asherman's comment, so I'll tackle a few things at once.
I have followed numerous debates for years on various subjects. I have found one thing in common in all of those debates, and in this one. People getting off the topic to argue the words being used. Legalized murder or sanctioned homicide are splitting hairs which I, at least, think all sides understand the meaning of quite thoroughly. There is disagreement whether the phrases are properly or appropriately used, but both sides agree on the meaning. We are talking about killing a human being which is sanctioned by the government.
There is a bumper sticker that says, "Don't steal, the government doesn't like the competition." This idea applies to the argument between murder and capital punishment. Either one is the premeditated killing of another person. It is only a matter of who is doing the killing. And the idea is extended under an assortment of highly contorted legalisms, that it is ok for someone to kill a baby that isn't completely out of its mother's body, as long as the killing is done by a government regulated doctor, but it is not alright for someone to kill a baby by beating the mother. (Going back to Asherman's reference to common law.) Or killing the child once it is outside the mother and has drawn a breath.
Next I address the real issue of the debate. Just exactly when does a human being begin to exist. Agreement here will settle much of the discussion, not all but much. Asherman rightly points out that there are those who believe human life begins at the union of sperm and egg. I am one of those folks.
Asherman is also correct when he points out that law has for years upheld that life begins when the infant can survive outside the womb. This is a very bad definition from a legal and scientific standpoint. This difficulty arises because there is no consideration in the definition of how much assistance the child needs to continue to live. A wanted child can be provided with extraordinary medical care outside the womb and survive from as early as twenty weeks post conception, merger of sperm and egg. At the same time abortion is legal up until the baby is naturally and completely expelled from the mother in the usual way. A normally delivered baby does require a significant amount of care in clothing, feeding, care, cleaning, etc. Also the advance of medical science and art continues to extend back toward conception the ability to support a wanted baby outside the womb.
rufio wrote:It is only murder if it is a human being that is killed. Until it is born, or able to be born safely, a fetus is not a human being. It's not murder to kill a dog, it's property damage. Same thing here. Fetuses are alive, and I realize some people have emotional connections with them, but that does not make them human.
I addressed this above, but I'll expand a bit.
There is the argument that nothing truly significant happens to differentiate points of development once the sperm penetrates the egg. That merger can be watched as it happens. Everything else is noted in arrears. "Look, we can see that now." So any argument that some arbitrary point, age, in the pregnancy differentiates between a human and some precursor of a human is most artificial and subject to much argument and debate, and guaranteed not to gain some kind of consensus. I acknowledge that even the point of union of sperm and egg will not garner the necessary agreement, but I believe that it is a human once the sperm and egg have united and that anything which interferes with the child's development from then on constitutes murder.
On the subject of partial birth abortions this argument makes no sense to me on the issue of health of the mother. A woman who wants that abortion, or supposedly needs it, at such a late stage of the pregnancy is put under more strain having to partially deliver the baby, then WAIT while the doctor kills the baby, and then finish pushing the dead baby out. It would be much less strain on the mother if the baby were just continuously delivered alive.
But then we go back to the issue of the survivability of the baby outside the womb. How much effort would be required to keep the baby alive. And, as Asherman pointed out, once the baby is outside the mother's body and alive if it is not taken care of the charge of murder can be brought to bear.
Now, having argued all of that I will admit that while I am opposed to abortion more than many, I still admit the necessity to perform abortions where the PHYSICAL life of the mother is at risk. I consider that threat to be rather limited in scope to ectopic pregnancies and conditions such as eclampsia. And since eclampsia usually does not appear until late in a pregnancy the early delivery of the child can be accomplished to save the mother's life and still preserve the child's life. I do not support the legalization of abortions for cases of rape or incest. However, I do support extreme penalties for the man involved in those crimes including full castration in addition to jail time and child support captured by the courts through garnishment. Drawing on the advances of medical science again, DNA is right now an extremely positive indicator of paternity.
I do differ with many of the so called right to life folks in that I am also opposed to capital punishment. I do not believe that any human should be killed in a premeditated fashion.
Kelly
