[FreedomCalls]

Maybe I wasn't clear. I'll try again. I'm pointing out that using the term "murder" is wrong in both instances. For you see "murder" is a legal construct. It can only be applied after a court trial has found someone guilty of an unlawful premeditated killing. Since no abortionist has been convicted of murder in the last 30 years, then abortion is not murder even if you label it as such. You can condemn it in whatever terms you want but it is not correct to apply the label "murder." If you do you are making the same mistake as the Michael Moore-types make when they also apply that same label to our actions in Iraq. Both are improper uses of the term. Only when you've come to terms with that can you then follow on to debate the morality of the killing in either case.

That was my point, that the left applies the term "murder" to our actions in Iraq for many of the same reasons as the absolutists apply the term to abortion. Some day, I hope, it will once again be "murder" but today it is not and to use the term and and claim that that is the reason why it is morally unjustifiable is to make a circular argument, and not a very good one at that.

[Protagoras]

I reject your entire premise.

[Torie]

Murder has at once both a legal and a moral meaning, in lay terms. To a lawyer, it has only a legal meaning. A legal killing is not murder, it is simply killing. Thus the confusion. Of course, the contestants in the public square, want to rope in the term for themselves, and conflate the technicalities. It has a nice ring to it. The battle over capturing the terms and words is fierce in the public square. With good reason. It sometimes tips the debate.

[Irish Rose]

Good grief. Murder is a moral term; it means a killing that is unjustifiable. Where do you get the idea that it's a "legal construct"--only?

[MHGinTN]

You asserted, "Since no abortionist has been convicted of murder in the last 30 years ..." You are mistaken, by several counts. Aborticutionists have been convicted of murder; their victims were the failure of the aborticutionists to kill the alive child while still in the womb, so they were murdered' post delivery.