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To: thoughtomator
139 - please learn how to think.

"murder - 1 : the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought"

"malice - 1 : desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another"

A person has to be born to be a person, embryos are not 'persons'.

And abortion is not a crime.

You are defining 'killing a non person' as murder, with malice. Abortions are not done on peole and are not done with malice.

In war and executions, we are definitely killing already born people with malice. And they are both legal.

So - if abortions are murder (according to your definitions) then executions and abortions to save the life of the mother, and killing in war - are all murder.

And in fact, since you are defining 'killing' as murder, you better stop eating, period. As any time you eat anything, you are effectively 'killing' something living, even if they are non-persons.
140 posted on 08/24/2003 8:00:40 PM PDT by XBob
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To: XBob
I can think just fine, thank you.

First, I am not defining killing as the same as murder. Perhaps someone else did, but not I. I know the difference.

Killing an enemy in war on the battlefield when he is armed and intends to kill you if he can is not murder, it is self-defense.

The death penalty I agree is state-sanctioned murder. Executions are murder, absolutely.

Now, to the heart of the debate:

A person need not be born to be legally a person. If one were to cut an unborn child out of the belly of a mother, killing the child, but the mother lives, the child has been murdered. There are at least two high-profile cases of prosecution for the murder of unborn children in progress as we speak.

It is a matter of basic biology that the life cycle of a human being begins at conception, not at birth. People are not born spontaneously with no preliminary development. The fact that every fetus has a unique combination of DNA establishes that even before birth it is an individual human being. No amount of talk can eliminate the fact that a child in utero is a human being at the very beginning stages of life.

Malice is a misleading word in this context. A cold-blooded thug might kill without any emotion, including malice, but would still be a murderer.
142 posted on 08/24/2003 8:23:05 PM PDT by thoughtomator (Welcome to the Iraq Roach Motel - Islamofascists check in, but they don't check out!)
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