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Billthedrill wrote:

“Regarding your statement on abortion, I have two questions for you concerning the unborn child:

“1. If it isn’t human, what is it?”

You use the word “human” in your first question as an adjective. Using the word “human” as an adjective to modify other nouns, there are human beings, human artifacts, human events, human corpses. The “unborn child” in your question
is either a human embryo or a human fetus. Using the modifier “human” does not answer the question of whether terminating the growth of a human embryo or fetus is murder. That question requires additional information within a fully-defined context.

“2. If it isn’t alive, what is it?”

Being alive is a necessary but not sufficient condition to being a creature endowed by its Creator with human unalienable rights.

By the way, my argument that the statement “Abortion is murder” is a lie means that those who argue that “all abortions are murders” is a lie. I have not argued, nor have I eliminated the possibility, that some abortions — such as the termination of a fully-formed viable fetus — may constitute a homicide.

JNS

There is more than a bit of sophistry there, I'm afraid. Slippery definitions won't help you out of this very simple question. They will lead you to the anomalous position that while a foetus is human life (what else could it be? I notice you prefer not to answer that), it isn't a human being. That is, essentially, your argument. In which case we're dealing with the arbitrary - you may certainly set the standard of the birth event as the criterion but that is a political definition, not a biological one. The foetus has a heartbeat, a separate immune system, it is provably cognitive and it respires. Requiring that it transit the birth canal in addition in order to be considered a human being strikes me as a little silly, (not to mention problematic for those born by caesarian section).

Concentrating, then, on the definition of murder - are there instances where this is not simply the taking of a human life, but the unjustified taking of a human life? In this case you must find a justification. The life of the mother has been used as such a justification. The "quality of life" of the child once born has been used as a justification, however presumptuous that bit of prophecy might be considered. Inconvenience has been used as a justification. But in any of these cases, a deliberate decision has been made to end a human life.

So redefine "murder" if you like to make it fit the occasion, but please do not presume to redefine what is human.