“If it’s human, killing it is by definition ‘murder’.”
Why do so many people have a hard time understanding that?
Killing a human is not murder, killing without just cause is.
“If it’s human, killing it is by definition ‘murder’.”
Hmmm... Trayvon Martin was human, and the preponderance of opinion here at FR agreed with the jury that killing him was not murder, likewise the demises of various and sundry criminals of the sort Texans describe as someone “who needs killin’”, the deaths of Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives through the agency of American and allied arms,... (I trust I need not go on.)
If it’s human, killing it is by definition homicide. Even under a radically pro-life legal regime as is advocated both by JimRob’s official policy here at FR and the preponderance of opinion among FReepers, there are a vanishly small number of instances in which abortion would be justifiable homicide, rather than murder: ending an ectopic pregnancy destroys a unique human being, not doing so, allows that unique human being’s growth to imperil the health of his or her mother, possibly causing her death, and also ends in the death of the child.
Whether there are others — less certain life-of-mother v. life-of-child triage situations, or even an exception for rape or incest (or even just forcible rape), is what abortion policy will turn on when the gradually growing pro-life majority managed to thrust the courts out of the matter and return it to the political sphere.
“Why do so many people have a hard time understanding that?”
Because the urge to rationalize one’s own misbehavior is so strong.