According to your formulation of what should be a crime, murder does not qualify - as it only directly affects one person, it doesn't fall under the "does not harm or affect the public at large" reasoning.

Your reasoning is flawed, obviously, as murder *is* a crime. And given the viewpoint of anti-abortion activists, so is abortion. To allow abortion in their viewpoint, you have to show that an abortion is not the same thing as ending a life. Your arguments so mischaracterize the arguments that you are arguuing against, you are either deliberately misstating them (so you can easily argue against them, known as a straw-man fallacy), or you are simply not listening to people that disagree with you.

Either way, you aren't worth arguing with.

Thank you, amschat... I didn't see your reply before I posted mine. You said it well.

A crime affects the public at large. Murder affects the public at large. First of all, it leaves open the posibility that you could be murdered if it weren't illegal, and second if one person is murdered, it will scare people and cause a reaction. Since a fetus under a certain age is not according to the law considered a person, abortion can not be murder. The definition of a living human capable of being murdered is someone able to maintain life outside of the mother. Up untill this point, they are a part of the mother. Or do you disagree that a non sustainable fetus is a person?

Crimes are defined and punished by statutes and by the common law. Most common law offences are as well known, and as precisely ascertained, as those which are defined by statutes; yet, from the difficulty of exactly defining and describing every act which ought to be punished, the vital and preserving principle has been adopted, that all immoral acts which tend to the prejudice of the community are punishable by courts of justice.

if one person is murdered, it will scare people and cause a reaction.

But that is not why a murderer is prosecuted. The murderer is prosecuted for a crime against a person, not for scaring society or causing a reaction.

Personally, I have my own reasons for why the government shouldn't be involved in pregnancy/childbirth, etc., but your's is a weak argument.

"The point I'm trying to make is that its not something you can make illegal because you don't agree with it"

Racism, sexual harassment, slavery, drug laws, almost every law we have is based upon a moral judgement. Abortion is the killing of what would otherwise be a living, breathing thing. The hypocrisy is that if someone attacks you and kills your fetus, it is a living thing, but if you kill your own it isn't.

Abortion is taking a life. If you we as a society can legalize the taking of a life and not degrade ourselves in the process, fine, but many people differ, and your morals are no more superior than theirs. Abortion is no more a right than drug use or anything else.

"Yes because a crime has to hurt someone, and a fetus is not a someone."

Your own moral judgement, WHICH, I might add the law often is ambiguous about. When someone's pregnancy is terminated by negligence or a crime, the fetus is a living thing. When Liberals want to do it themselves, it isn't. You are apparently saying that as long as you kill your own children, it is okay.

There's no universal reason or truth to your argument, just a subjective values judgement. When you enter that realm, the society as a whole has to decide on those values, and as much as you'd like to thing otherwise, the jury is still out...

No. The law is actually quite clear in what it says, and it says what I am telling you. It defines murder as the unlawfull killing of a human being, who inturn must be able to be sustained outside of the mother. Baker- Where does the law say that when you kill someone who is 10 weeks in that you are also killing the baby?

Reply #5 By: sandy2 - 9/27/2004 6:50:24 PM A crime affects the public at large. Murder affects the public at large. First of all, it leaves open the posibility that you could be murdered if it weren't illegal, and second if one person is murdered, it will scare people and cause a reaction. Since a fetus under a certain age is not according to the law considered a person, abortion can not be murder. The definition of a living human capable of being murdered is someone able to maintain life outside of the mother. Up untill this point, they are a part of the mother. Or do you disagree that a non sustainable fetus is a person? Crimes are defined and punished by statutes and by the common law. Most common law offences are as well known, and as precisely ascertained, as those which are defined by statutes; yet, from the difficulty of exactly defining and describing every act which ought to be punished, the vital and preserving principle has been adopted, that all immoral acts which tend to the prejudice of the community are punishable by courts of justice.

And at *what* point do you consider life to have started? That is how they make it a crime! They consider it life beginning at "conception!

What I find weird is that the government says that up until a certain age, I wasn't considered a "human being." So when I was conceived, I wasn't human, but now I am? How is that possible? I thought I was always human, a homo sapien. Does a fetus mutate from one totally different species to another? I didn't think so. I'd like to see someone tell me how I'm wrong. I guess I could really care less what the law considers "human" because, I'm sorry, it's wrong.

There WOULDN'T be so many abortions if the religious right would stop treating contraceptives as a mortal sin.

I'm not saying that it's right to have sex before you're married (in fact, I think it's wrong), but if 2 people seriously want to do it that bad, all those lectures on abstinence won't mean squat. A condom or diaphragm, however, can stop things like abortion from ever becoming an issue in the first place.

"Abstinence has a high failure rate."