Is abortion really murder?

For more than three decades, opponents of abortion have called its practice murder. Abortion supporters consider this notion extreme. Well, is it or isn’t it?
Let’s take a closer look.
Webster’s dictionary defines murder as killing a person with “malice aforethought.” This means that the taking of life is 1) deliberate (aforethought) and 2) with intention to cause harm (malice). This is consistent with the legal definition of murder.
Both definitions, however, leave a loophole for the abortion lobby. A person who commits murder does so with “intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse.”
The Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 gave pro-abortionists the legal justification and excuse needed to subvert the legal definition of murder.
The same can be said for statutes on capital punishment, part of a state’s criminal code. The legality of capital punishment is wrapped in the “legal justification or excuse” clause.
But there’s a grievous difference between abortion and capital punishment, one that transcends legal definitions and framework.
Abortion is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life with intent to cause harm to that life. Capital punishment, on the other hand, is the deliberate taking of life that has been adjudicated, convicted and condemned by the rule of law; with intent to cause harm to that life.
Individuals facing capital punishment have been found guilty of usually heinous and violent acts against humanity. They’ve been Constitutionally served with a fair and impartial trial by peers. They’ve been tried, convicted, sentenced and otherwise processed in a court of law. They’ve been remanded to the criminal justice system for punishment and execution of sentence.
Condemned persons have committed crimes against others worthy of the penalty of death. These include murder, rape, molestation and other acts of a cruel, violent nature.
The bottom line is that capital punishment is about dispensing justice to those who have acted unjustly toward others. It is also about protecting the public against violent individuals who are at risk of re-offending.
In stark contrast, abortion is the taking of life that’s guilty of nothing but being conceived. Unborn children are the consequential by-products of selfish human choices. They are innocent victims of self-serving intentions to deny life.
Likewise, murder victims are also the by-products of self-serving and deliberate choices. Their lives were unjustly taken by another, whose intent was to deny life.
Abortion is about as close to murder as any act can get without actually meeting the legal standard.
Yet, leave law books and dictionaries out of the discussion and the only things separating abortion from murder are just words.
But actions can neither be distinguished by definitions, nor aptly described by words how they are similar or different. Rather, action must be compared and contrasted against itself.
If the only distinction between murder and abortion is the insertion of a single legal clause, then I see no difference between the two actions themselves.
I’d say anti-abortionists have a pretty strong case for calling abortion murder, because, the legal definition notwithstanding, it really is.
Consider that for any abortion to happen, there must first be a plan: by the individual seeking the abortion, the clinician at intake, the nurse in surgery prep and, of course, the physician performing the procedure. This is aforethought.
Abortion is not merely a medical procedure; the result is termination of a human life always full flesh and blood with a beating heart and developing brain. The intent of the abortion is to cause harm to the life inside the womb. This is malice—or the intent to cause harm.
Put the two together, and you have the fundamental elements of murder.
Action by action, there’s no practical difference between abortion and murder—just what is written by lawyers.
What a strange ethical paradox abortion is to the medical profession: The Hippocratic Oath dictates that a doctor’s first duty is to DO NO HARM and save life. Yet, hypocritically, that very oath is violated with every abortion performed. While some tools of the trade are being used to protect the life of the woman for whom the procedure is done, others are destroying the unborn human life insider of her. The irony here so plain and the conflictions so thick, one couldn’t cut it with a scalpel.
But in spite of the obvious medical contradictions, thousands of abortions are performed on demand each year simply because the pregnancy was unplanned and is unwanted. Precious few abortions are performed to save the mother’s life or are the result of a sexual crime. The woman, empowered by laws pushed by social advocacy groups, is granted ownership of the unborn life just because it grows within her body.
There is no autonomy for the unborn; only for the born.
So, why don’t pro-abortionists just stop dancing around the issue of whether or not abortion is murder and admit that they support the intentional taking of human life? I mean, all legality aside, that’s exactly what abortion is.
If unborn life is not as important to us as life already born, then let’s just be forthright about it and not make any excuses.
No rationale, no legal clause, and no definition can change what abortion is or what it isn’t.
It is what it is.
Can you handle it?