If I Believe Abortion Is Murder, Why Don't I Say That?

After speaking on abortion at a recent event, a Christian man asked me why I didn't say, "Abortion is murder." For the record, I did state that abortion kills an innocent human being, that it's wrong, and that it should be illegal. It's true, though, I never used the word "murder," even though I believe abortion is a type of murder.

When I teach on abortion, I'm not merely conveying facts or giving a motivational speech. I'm trying to train my audience in the art of pro-life persuasion. In other words, I'm teaching pro-lifers how to convince others of the pro-life view. In order to do that effectively, one must understand abortion-choice advocates, their thinking, and how they might respond to what we say.

Simply saying abortion is murder might be personally satisfying and get you high fives from other pro-lifers, but it isn’t likely to help a person move towards the pro-life view. They may not believe the unborn is a human being or that she has the same right to life. Therefore, the claim that abortion is murder skips a few logical steps.

For example, imagine an atheist tells you, “Christianity is a fairy tale.” Obviously that wouldn’t be persuasive, but you definitely wouldn’t think his statement was reasonable because it came out of the blue. There were no logical steps that led to that conclusion. Their statement assumes that Christianity is false, but they haven’t shown that to be the case. In that situation, you might be unwilling to continue the conversation. If they want to claim Christianity is a fairy tale, they have to first give reasons why Christianity is false.

In the same way, pro-lifers must first show that the unborn is a human being and that abortion kills that being before they can claim it’s murder. Jumping to the rhetorically explosive claim (from the perspective of someone who favors abortion) that abortion is murder is more likely to shut down their willingness to dialogue.

The same is true when referring to abortion as a holocaust. Between pro-lifers, we can all agree that the 50+ million innocent human beings killed through abortion is a holocaust. People not persuaded by the pro-life view, though, don’t see it that way. To them, it sounds like an unjustified claim. If we want to say abortion is a holocaust, we should first show that abortion kills an innocent human being and present data that indicates how many abortions have occurred in a particular time period. If they believe your evidence, then taking the next step by claiming abortion is a holocaust will be more believable.

Again, I think abortion is murder and believe its legalization has resulted in a holocaust. When I’m training pro-lifers how to dialogue with people who aren’t pro-life, though, I usually teach them not to use terminology that will alienate our friends who disagree.

Comments

[Kevin]

At the moment abortion isn't murder. Murder is "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." Right now it is lawful to kill a human being in the womb and therefore is not murder. A more succinct definition is "homicide" which is any killing of a human.

In addition, the use of the word "murder' can be argued away. Homicide is much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to argue away. That makes the argument much stronger because the only fallback position for the pro-choicer is that we don't really know when a person is a person. At that point it is quite easy to find scenarios where most people (save for the most educated) apply that inconsistently.

[James Archbold]

You probably don't think every case of termination is murder. If you can think of a situation where a termination is the only possible choice where one life is preserved over continuing the pregnancy to birth and risking the life of both then you are recognising that there is a grey area. If you can't think of one then you will be seen rightly or wrongly as a moral monster.

[Andy]

At the moment abortion isn't murder. Murder is "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." Right now it is lawful to kill a human being in the womb and therefore is not murder. A more succinct definition is "homicide" which is any killing of a human.

In addition, the use of the word "murder' can be argued away. Homicide is much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to argue away.

Not at all. Quoting from 1 U.S. Code § 8:
"(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development."
Legally, abortion is neither murder nor homicide.

That makes the argument much stronger because the only fallback position for the pro-choicer is that we don't really know when a person is a person.

Also, no. A pro-choicer does not need to defend the position that we "don't really know when a person is a person", if anything, what (s)he would need to defend is that a human in early stages of development is *not* a person (and that's not the only fallback position s(he) would have because she could also argue that a woman's right to bodily integrity is by itself perfectly sufficient to establish abortion as legal).

[Warren Gillmer]

http://crossencountersmin.com/featured-article/abortion-murder/

[kpolo]

Andy,
You realize that by similar definition, blacks were considered non-person. By your logic, if the majority decides tomorrow to alter the US code and define those over 6'3" to be non-persons, then we can butcher them with impunity.

Laws encode morality that we know and experience to be true. Not the other way around.

[Andy]

kpolo,

You realize that by similar definition, blacks were considered non-person. By your logic, if the majority decides tomorrow to alter the US code and define those over 6'3" to be non-persons, then we can butcher them with impunity.

It's not "my logic", it was a mere statement of fact (I replied to someone pointing to the *legal* definitions of murder and homicide)
Also, a mere majority vote cannot lead to any conceivable legal outcome, not in a constitutional democracy.

Laws encode morality that we know and experience to be true.

That sounds like an oversimplification. I'm pretty sure that what you "experience" to be morally true will not always be in agreement with what I or someone else will experience as morally true.

[Kevin]

Andy,
First of all, the legal definition of a word should never be used to define reality. Case in point: corporate personhood. Is a corporation a person? No, and nobody argues that they are. But the legal definition is that they are (and has been for many, many decades, and for good reason). Legal definitions correspond to the scope of law, but do not necessarily describe reality accurately.

OK, let's presume that a woman has a right to "bodily integrity", whatever that means. Let's also presume that the woman decides to kill a 1 day old baby because it violated her bodily integrity in some way. *Almost* every person will argue that she is unjustified in doing so. Why? Because at that point the child has the same right that the woman does. If the child did not have the same right, the woman is not un-justified in killing the 1 day old. In other words, there is something inherent in the 1 day old that negates the validity of its unjustified death.

But if a woman is not justified in killing a 1 day old because of a shared right to bodily integrity what is the condition that caused that right to be conferred in the first place? Being born? But birth is just a change of location in conjunction with a giant mess. There is no change inherent in the child that occurs in the birthing process besides how its held, how it gets oxygen and into which orifice it ingests food.

For that reason practically every argument for abortion ends up on the personhood argument; because there IS no difference between a 1 day old and a -1 day old. In order to allow for abortion and still be consistent (or, at least, pretend to be), some nebulous definition of personhood is the only way that can be achieved.