If abortion is actually killing children... or is it?

Abortion is murder!  Abortion kills children and babies!

Such statements get thrown about by anti-abortionists (not pro-life, but anti-abortion) as they bewail the procedure and lambast those who think abortion should be legal.  Proponents of abortion are not trying to push an agenda whereby women have to get abortions; opponents are trying to push an agenda whereby women are denied the option of an abortion if they decide they wanted one.  Anti-abortionists are trying to block the ability of others to pursue a course of action; proponents are just trying to let women choose for themselves.

But what about the baby!?!? 

Words are important for words reflect thought and if you control the words, you can influence thought.  In a debate, if you control the terms, you control the debate.  That is why anti-abortionists use terms like ‘baby and child,’ instead of fetus.  They will make the claim: that is the same reason why the pro-choice use ‘fetus’.  However, just because both sides may make the same claim, both sides do not equally reflect the proper usage of the terms.  One of the terms is appropriate, while the others are not. 

Child and baby are references to a whole unit, a separate offspring that can survive on its own, though it is dependent any may take over care: mother, father, uncle, adoptive parent, etc.  A fetus is a wholly subsumed and incomplete organism that cannot survive on its own and no one may take over its care until it has been born, i.e. is a separate entity – that is it has become a baby.  Until then, it is a fetus.

But it is alive!

So are plants… any organism.  What ‘life’ does a fetus have?  It has the same life as any organism, which is nothing more than mere biological – there is no difference in the type of life of any organism at that state.

It has its own DNA!

That merely means it had two parents, and is not a clone of its parent.  Most complex organisms have their own DNA, for most organisms have the biology of two parents.

But it will become a human!

Exactly… ‘will become’ means ‘is not now’, and potentials are not what we are dealing with.  We all are potential corpses, but we do not treat each other as such.  We are alive now as humans, our own separate entities with our own individual lives, and those are beyond the mere biological lives of all organisms.  

The obvious key implication here is potential.  However, no one takes two eggs, setting one on a nightstand and the other in a nest expecting the nightstand one to crow in the morning and the one in the nest to lay more eggs for the same reason that though the eggs are potential fowls, they are not actual fowls at the time.  Similarly, no one takes a pine tree seed and says that tomorrow he are going to build a house with the wood, for the seed is potentially a tree that can produce wood. 

Look at these pictures [of a developed or an aborted fetus]! – don’t these stir you emotionally?

A picture of most mammalian fetuses within a certain number of weeks, look similar.  Continue beyond those weeks and the types of animals that resemble each other diminishes; however, they still exist.  The fetuses of other primates look similar to human fetuses for an extended period of time.  Regarding the grisly pictures of aborted fetuses, the scenes of a surgery or an automobile accident with casualties both may look grisly, but neither of them – though they may stir an emotional reaction – is an argument in any way, shape or form. 

But it’s a baby! – someone’s child! 

This is where anti-abortionists do not actually follow through with their premises.  If the premises are actually believed, then it is hypocrisy or cowardice to not follow them; however, at base I think it is a wiser realization breaking through.  If you saw an actual baby out in someone’s yard and someone else came up and was trying to kill that baby, you’d do something: try and stop the killing and save the [actual] baby.  Anti-abortionists just want to picket?  However, though through connotation the terms ‘baby and child’ are used, they are not actually believed or acted upon in practice.  When the denotative [actual] woman is standing there in a point of her life already rife with emotion with the thoughts and feelings an abortion is needed, the connotative, potential child [actual fetus] is not given the same weight and value.  Subjectivity may color what we see, but objectivity will stare us back in the face.  This is as it should be; it is wrong to initiate force the the actual, the whole individual.  The actual woman has a right to her life and choices, and the potential does not; similarly, the living human being pursues a life path, a corpse gets buried.  Just because we are potential corpses, does not mean we bury someone ahead of their time. 

There is the additional issue of if it is a full individual, then any and all accidental terminations (miscarriages) would have to be investigated as potential homicides (murder or manslaughter).  This would include practically all women who have tried to give birth, for though there may have been a fertilized egg, a smaller percentage make it to term.  If someone died, whether an adult or baby in the crib, any death gets investigated.  Making a fetus as equivalent an individual would necessitate such investigations for potential intent or negligence.

But God gave it a soul!

If God did, why would you want to deny the soul within the fetus, the quickest and surest path to God as it would not had a chance to sin?

For the anti-abortionists, if you feel abortion is wrong, then just admit that it is your preference and not a logical base - not an objective stance.  (religious revelation is not an objective stance).  In the meantime, drop your connotations from argument for they are as pointless as trying to describe the color of 'invisible.'  However, your pushing for moral condemnations to be put into legislation sets up legal punishments for not seeing the same shade of invisible.