Are you asking about abortion in general, or elective abortion? For instance, I had a miscarriage. The medical term for this is "spontaneous abortion." The pregnancy was aborted and terminated.

In any case, I do not believe that it is. Certainly not in the case of a spontaneous abortion.

Aside from whether or not abortion is murder, we have to ask quite a lot of other questions to get to any real understanding of elective abortion in society. Abortion is a complex social issue with a history dating back thousands of years. (My questions address the United States, as I am a member of that society.)

What happens if we scale back government benefits for single mothers and their children, yet require women to give birth?

Is it ethical to require a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, and incur the expense (not just financial expense, but the permanent changes to her body, the reaction of society, the pain and discomfort) against her will? If you are forcing her to be pregnant and give birth, does that come with an equal responsibility to share in the total cost (which, again, is not entirely financial) of that requirement? Is it Constitutional to deprive a woman of autonomy over her body without due process of law?

Why do women have abortions in the first place? How can those underlying problems be solved? Simply outlawing elective abortion will not solve those underlying social issues.

Will outlawing elective abortion stop it? History tells us that the answer to this question is no. It simply forces it underground to illegal practices (such as the family who recently forced a pregnant teenage girl to drink turpentine...an act that was already illegal...) that are unsafe. (This is one of the reasons people supported legalizing it in the first place.)

What about rape/incest victims? Are we now saying that they had to be forced to have sex and now we are going to further victimize them by forcing them to give birth to the child of their attacker?

What about the health of the mother? Does she not have equal rights to life? If the pregnancy is, purposely or not, threatening her life, does she not have a right to defend her life and health by ending that pregnancy?

Is it ethical or Constitutional to require a woman to do something with her body that is not required of a man?

Does defining a fetus as a live person mean that a woman has the obligation of maintaining that live person inside her own body against her will? I do not think that it does. I think this argument skips a few steps.

http://womenshistory.about.com/.../abortion.htm

Yes. For me, a person is a person at conception - meaning as soon as that sperm and that egg are connected, that is a living human being.

Many people don't agree with this idea - perhaps even most people. The question is where do you draw the line. Is the baby a person when it forms a brain? When it's mother is in her third trimester? These questions can never be answered, so I believe it's best to draw the line as early as possible.




AntigoneRising: Even if you define a fetus as a person, that doesn't solve how to reconcile conflicts of the rights of the fetus (person) with the mother (person who also has rights).

The question was if abortion was murder. I said that yes, it is. I chose to simply answer the question and not go too deeply into the issue, partly because I dislike people who say too much of their opinion, and partly because I still haven't formed opinions on some of it.

erm...
I struggle with this. I don't really think its quite on the same level as actual murder (For example- if a mother's life were at risk from carrying a child, I think forcing her to carry it is far closer to murder than allowing an abortion. Forcing a young girl who's been raped to give birth to the child of her own father I think also amounts to a far greater crime than abortion).
But that's not to say I feel comfortable about it either. I think society has become very flippant about the issue- women get pregnant at inconvenient moments and have a "oh never mind, I'll just get an abortion" attitude.
I think its a highly unpleasant thing that I'd really rather didn't happen- but there are situations where its the lesser of two evils.

We've all had an opinion here, all had our say, because we have not been aborted. Unfortionately no fetus had their say.

Yes, abortion is murder. It is the killing of a living human being and is therefore murder.

Yes, Abortion is murder.

No, I don't think it's murder. I don't think that potential is enough to make it a person. It is nothing more than a glob of cells.

The line does have to be drawn somewhere, though. I believe that if a baby can survive outside the mother, it has achieved personhood.

The problem is, although everyone is entitled to their own opinion, some feel the need to push personal feelings on others. You asked for opinions and that is just what I gave you. Now you have to decide for yourself what you believe and what you can live with. No one can answer that but you.

yes it is murder.. I agree with the comment before me..

No I don't. In my opinion, life begins at birth. After all, we celebrate our BIRTHdays not our CONCEPTIONdays. You count how old you are from the day you were born, not the day you were conceived.

Although I don't think abortion is something to be taken lightly, I am strongly pro choice.

(slightly edited on April 3rd, 2008)

Yes of course abortion is murder. I am the father of three boys and a girl; so I have been through the process enough to see first hand evidence.

While the baby is in the womb the baby will show definete signs of emotion and thought process (such as dancing to music (my second son really liked jazz music). The baby also has moodiness (when something invades it space such as my arm resting on my wife's stomach. For example, my first son kicked my arm so hard it knocked my arm about an inch off of my wife's stomach). They will also play, one of my son's would chase the sonogram deal around the stomach and kick it. We saw my third son crying in the sonogram, and then immediately begin to such his thumb to calm himself down.

The heart is beating, pushing blood through the veins. The baby is digesting food through the umbilical cord. By definition a living being is anything that is "capable of vital functions." which these most certainly are. The unborn baby is definetely a living organism.

When the science of logic is applied, the support is overwhelming. Since it is a human outside of the womb, it would by all use of logic be one inside of it as well.

Biology is also an overwhelming support. Since there is no genetic change in the DNA at any point in the pregnancy (or at delivery), then the unborn baby must be considered human at all times after conception.

Now then, since murder is the premeditated choice to kill another human, it must be concluded that the volitional and premeditated decision involved in abortion to kill the unborn baby is in fact murder.