Abortion is Murder

Voting: ELO 2,000 minimum and Select Winner You troll, you lose. You forfeit, you lose. Last round, rebuttals only. No new arguments. All sourced material must include a citation to a source. If you cite a source, then you must directly quote the source. Only direct quotation from sources shall be deemed acceptable for a source to support an assertion or contention. No citing a source without quoting it. All citations to sources must be within the debate. No citations to sources in the comments. All citations to sources must be online only and working links must be provided so that the source may be examined by the opponent. No offline sources may be used as they cannot be scrutinized with reasonable ease. All citations to sources must be in the form of working links. All citations to a quoted source must be adjacent to the quotation so that it is easy to determine which source supports which assertion. If you desire to use a URL shortener, you may. However, you must use goo.gl ( https://goo.gl... ) There is work associated with scrutinizing sources. The purpose of these rules is to make it easier to scrutinize sources. Violating the rules on sources is sufficient grounds for a loss. However, a view toward substantial compliance and satisfaction of the purpose of the rules should be considered. *** BEGIN OPENING ARGUMENT *** The claim that abortion is murder is sometimes made argumentatively by political opponents of abortion with the objective of associating abortions with the negative connotations of murder. The larger argument, of course, is that abortions are bad and should be outlawed, but whether or not abortions are bad or should be banned isn't the topic of this debate. So, the focus must be on the resolution. This debate is necessary semantic. So, it will be important to look at definitions for guidance. First it is important to establish a working definitions for "abortion" and "murder", as used in the context of a debate where abortion is argumentatively claimed to be murder. The following are four entries for "abortion" from reputable dictionaries: Oxford Dictionary - "The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy." http://goo.gl... American Heritage Dictionary - "Induced termination of a pregnancy with destruction of the embryo or fetus." https://goo.gl... Collins Dictionary - "an operation or other procedure to terminate pregnancy before the fetus is viable" http://goo.gl... Merriam-Webster Dictionary - "the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus" http://goo.gl... From the same sources, the respective entries for "murder" - Oxford Dictionary - "The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another" http://goo.gl... American Heritage Dictionary - "The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting" https://goo.gl... Collins Dictionary - "the unlawful and malicious or premeditated killing of one human being by another; also, any killing done while committing some other felony, as rape or robbery" http://goo.gl... Merriam-Webster Dictionary - "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought" http://goo.gl... I will not be hyper-technical with these definitions. A commonality from all of these definitions for murder is that the killing must be a crime, illegal, and/or unlawful. An abortion is certainly a killing but abortions are, by and large, legal killings that are sanctioned by the state. For that reason, and perhaps other reasons, abortions are not necessarily murders. This is not to say that it is impossible for an abortion to be a murder. In some jurisdictions, an abortion may actually be a murder, depending on the circumstances. For example, in 2014 the "Kansas Attorney General’s office [...] charged Scott Robert Bollig, 30, of first degree murder [...] after he laced his pregnant girlfriend’s pancake with a crushed abortion drug" which "caused the death of her 8-10-week old pre-born baby." http://goo.gl.... However, cases like these are the exception rather than the rule, as the vast majority of abortions in the United States are performed legally.