No, SERIOUSLY, these arent red herrings. How can I tell you how it isnt murder when I have no idea wtf you mean by murder? It is not murder because it isnt against the law...does that work for you? An acceptable definition of murder is "unlawful killing." Therefore, abortion is not murder. Is that SERIOUSLY what you wanted to hear? Its a horrible definition, although far better than your definitions.
I am clearly not talking about troops or the death penalty, and you must know that. By your definition abortion is murder because a human is being killed. Congrats, no one cares if its murder under that definition.

I just proved that it isnt murder, I answered your question.

Its funny how people who start horrible threads cant understand how proving X is Y is pretty useless unless we all know wtf Y is.

Funny how people who have participated in dozens of abortion threads are a little hesitant to walk into poorly-set traps and want to get definitions clear up front.

Attack the messenger? I dont care what you BELIEVE. I care what you are ASKING. I do not understand the question and am thus asking for clarification. I am not shooting the messenger.

if u dont care please head to another thread so i can get some different viewpoints. thx.

Plz respond to my proof that it isnt murder thx

I don't see how you can view a 2 celled splotch of cells a human being without introducing some sort of religious hocus pocus. Hows that?

im not going circular logic with you. id rather hear other opinions at this point. im pretty clear on yours.

rivercamel,

If abortions are murder, why aren't you blowing up abortion clinics and shooting up abortion doctors? Because there are people who believe just as you do, that abortion is murder, and they're out doing something to stop it. What is it that drives them to do stuff like that but prevents you from doing it? If it's just "I'm scared of what might happen" or "I don't want to be punished", that's probably a reason I can empathize with fwiw. But then you must surely agree that the types of people who blow up abortion clinics and assassinate doctors who provide abortions are heroic martyrs, right? They've concluded that these abortion doctors are murderers who must be stopped. If there was a "Murder Clinic" in town and I begged and pleaded with the cops and the politicians to shut it down but they did nothing -- in fact even went so far as to call it legal -- I don't think my next step would be to beg and plead with the police and the politicians a little more. Or maybe it would be *my* next step. Because I'm too comfortable, or lazy, or scared to do more. But that would say something pretty shameful about me, I think.

I mean I thought the some people were actively murdering other people, I knew exactly where there murders were taking place and I could do something to prevent it -- I'd think I'd be morally obligated to stop it. Aren't you morally obligated to do something beyond just posting about it on 2p2 or voting for pro-life candidates?

Except that all abortions don't involve "2 celled splotchez of cells".

ummm...cause i support the right to an abortion maybe

??? More phrases you dont know the definition of? It isnt circular. You asked if abortion is murder. Murder is unlawful killing. Abortion is legal. Thus, abortion is not murder. This is called a proof or a syllogism. It is correct. It is not circular.

Wait...you dont disagree with one of my premises do you? Perhaps the premise that is based on...gasp...the DEFINITION of murder? Weird, if only someone had tried to figure out an acceptable definition of murder ahead of time.

You support the right to murder?

How can you seriously not see that this entire discussion is all about semantics and definitions?

No. I am fairly sure there are murders going on right now, somewhere in the world, and with a little effort I could be certain. And I could probably stop them. I'm not obligated to stop it.

However I probably sound like a pussy if I rant and rave about how atrocious it is without being willing to get off my couch to do anything about it.

Yeah I edited my post to capture some of this sentiment. There's just some element of "abortion is murder" but "the guys who blow up abortion clinics and shot abortion doctors are wrong too" that seems inherently contradictory to me. *If* abortion is murder -- *if* 30 years of legal abortions are equal with the Holocaust (another favorite quip from the pro-life movement)...we should celebrate every time someone has enough courage to blow up abortion clinics and shoot up abortion doctors. But 99% of the pro-life movement that says the former ("abortion is murder", "legal abortion = Holocaust") shudder at and denounce the Army of God types who blow up abortion clinics.

If you think abortion is murder, then I think you're stuck with the natural consequences of that -- namely that the people who blow up abortion clinics are heroic martyrs, and that you ought to be at their side lighting the explosives with them if it wasn't for your own personal failings.

FWIW, your first definition of murder was nonsensical, and the second one you gave was just about as ridiculous. So clarifying what exactly you mean by "murder" is absolutely crucial to debate. Getting tiny issues like this (off-the-wall, accepted-by-nobody definitions of every day terms) out of the way up front will help the discussion in the long run. Especially in *this* discussion, where the very terms are the reason for disagreement. Not everyone agrees on when life starts, and obviously not everyone has a single understanding on what murder is. I've never come across a definition of murder as broad as yours, and its breadth is truly astounding and sucks a lot of the morality out of the word "murder." So if you want to take a word that's packed with extreme connotations of grisliness and repugnance, turn it on its head, and sap it of any reasonable meaning, be prepared for a throng of how you define other words.

Damn vhawk, you just seerrrrved. Wrap your mind around that, sucka, then come back to this thread for some more servage.

its easy to serve people who have agenda based arguments and preconceived notions versus rational thought...and it was dvault who got served on that one

Agree, you dont have to go blow them up, and you can find it a little jarring or distasteful, but I dont see how you can find it wrong. Maybe if you have some bizarrely strong moral opposition to vigilantism.

LOL, my arguments have ONLY been based on rational thought here, I have barely even talked about my opinions or personal views whatsoever. I'm simply, RATIONALLY, trying to get you to explain wtf you are asking.

My proof that abortion is not murder was basically the 'definition' (wink wink) of a rational argument.

Damn, dvaut1, you got served, FYP style. Go wrap your dick around that ****e, then come back to this thread for pownicity and other things of that nature.

Cameltoe, to answer your question: with your worthless definition of murder (taking a life of another against their consent), yes, abortion is murder. You've won a meaningless debate, and I think I might challenge this forum to convince me that killing someone in a car accident isn't murder because, hey, that's taking the life of another without their consent.

I don't even "get" the distasteful part. "Legal abortion for 30 years = Holocaust, 70 million babies murdered" is a favored talking point of the pro-life movement.

ANALOGY TIME

Imagine it's WWII and you were fully aware of all the atrocities of the Holocaust the Germans perpetrated; you then hear about a guy who shot up some of the Einsatzgruppe Death Squads. Or you hear about how the SS soldiers quarters at Dachau were blown up by a bomb planted by a Nazi dissenter who objected to the extermination of Jews. Now, is "oh, I agree this Holocaust is awful...but shooting up the Death Squads, that's just distasteful" a rational opinion to have?

Doesn't square for me.

Well, I think its fair to say that you can just think that abortion docs are misguided. And sure, they NEED to be stopped, but that doesnt mean I wanna be the one to do it. A rabid dog needs to be put down but Old Yeller was still sad. The doctor is a murderer but he doesnt understand why...something?

I dunno man this is a bit of a stretch for me, just playing devil's advocate.

Would you consider preventing a fertilized egg from implanting to be? I.e., is the use of IUD's akin to murder? Are hormonal treatments that occur after conception ("Plan B")? If a woman has a miscarriage and high risk factors (i.e., overweight, previous miscarriages, smoker) should she be charged with a crime if she has another?

I don't know where you draw the line at the beginning of life. To me, conception is absurdly early, and following crowning is absurdly late. So life begins some point between, and before then, abortion (spontaneous or otherwise) doesn't even result in the loss of life.

And as many others have said, the discussion of "murder" is meaningless until one has defined that term more precisely.

I understand.

For one, I agree with the bolded. I can empathize with that.

It's the "doctor is a murderer but he doesn't understand why...therefore I'd shudder if someone assassinated him" part that doesn't square for me. I don't see how someone can be a murderer but "not understand why" -- doesn't that fail the maliciousness and "guilty mind" tests that most people use to determine what constitutes murder?

The absolute most we can grant the pro-life movement, I think, who want to hold that abortion is something very very bad but that we shouldn't blow up abortion clinics is that abortion doctors are guilty of voluntary manslaughter -- something like "they killed someone purposefully, but their state of mind was confused". Of course that doesn't work as well for their inflammatory demagoguery, so they say murder instead. I don't even think "voluntary manslaughter" works well, but I'm not sure there's a neat category we can put abortion doctors into.

And there's still an incongruousness about the "doctor is a murderer but he doesn't understand why...therefore it's distasteful to assassinate abortion doctors, even though it's not wrong" -- if, for instance, someone sits outside of Planned Parenthood and informs an abortion clinic doctor of all of their "you're doing something very evil" arguments as he heads into work everyday years and he continues to preform abortions, at some point, I'd think, the conclusion would have to be that the abortion doctor is beyond merely "misguided" and is malicious, or at least completely callous to human life. In sum, I feel like "misguided" could always be used as a euphemism for "malicious", and I'm not sure where we draw the line between "being misguided" and being malicious.

It is very odd to me that if you kill a mother and her unborn baby, you can be charged for double-homicide in most of the states in the US (including California).

But a mother can kill her own unborn baby and it's not a single homicide.

Meat is murder, milk is rape, abortion is involuntary manslaughter.