Abortion is Not Murder Essay example -- Argumentative Persuasive Topic

good-temperedbirth is Not Murder Is abortion slay? Murder is defined as il heavy killing with malice aforethought. Abortion fails this comment for two reasons. First, abortion is not il ratified, and second, there is no picture to suggest that expecting mothers feel malice towards their experience flesh and blood. Not all in all killing is murder, of course. Murder is actually a small subset of all killing, which includes inadvertent homicide, killing in self-defense, suicide, euthanasia, etc. When pro-life activists call abortion murder, they ar suggesting that abortion fits the definition of murder, namely, illegal killing with malice aforethought. However, abortion fails this definition for two reasons. First, abortion is not illegal, and second, mothers hardly feel malice towards their own unborn children. Some might object the first point is overly legalistic. Just because killing is legal doesnt make it right. Exterminating Jews in Nazi Germany was for certain leg al, but few doubt that it was murder. But why do we still consider the Holocaust murder? The answer is that we hold the Nazis to a high law. When the Nazis were tried in Nuremberg for their war crimes, they were not accused of crimes against Germans or redden crimes against Jews. Instead, they were aidd with crimes against humanity. The reason is because there was no legal basis to charge them otherwise. The massacre of Jews was legal under German law. So in do to punish the German leaders for clearly wrong behavior, the assort had to wake up a high law, a law of humanity. (1) The Holocaust was condemned as illegal, and therefore murder, because it violated this law. Many pro-life advocates claim that the same reasoning applies to abortion. Alt... ...heir legal basis is still a matter of controversy. Germany never signed an understanding of international law prohibiting genocide -- indeed, genocide was declared a ravishment of international law only at the Nuremberg tria ls themselves. In other words, the Allies retroactively applied international law to the Nazi war crimes. Ultimately, the legal basis for the Nazis prosecution rested on the law of world belief, or even, many claimed, the law of God. This raises many thorny questions, such as whose impression? And whose God? When the criminals are as obviously evil as the Nazis, so world opinion tends to be united, and there is no controversy. But what well-nigh a subject like abortion, in which the majority of public opinion is pro-choice, and on which most religions have different teachings? In this case, evoking a higher law becomes problematic, to say the least.