To me it just isn't government's place. I have no problem with courts defining things in terms of their legality but I still do not see a need for them to define life especially considering they are not really experts in the fields that define that sort of thing anyway. Personally I would view a scientific definition as being the most valid.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Would this still be your take, say, if a woman wanted to abort a foetus that is perfectly healthy and viable and the woman is just a couple days from her due date just because she decided this late in the game that she doesn't want it?

Foetus at 8 months:

So do you disagree with the definition the SC has made about life beginning when the baby takes its first breath of air independant of the womb?

See even though its the SC ultimately that boils down to it being a goverment definition of when life starts. So you oppose that on principle that they shouldn't be the ones to define it in the first place?

I oppose judges making that sort of definition rather than sticking to defining murder which is illegal but that doesn't change the fact that I do not think abortion should be considered part of the legal definition of murder.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Hmm...so from that i assume you're opposed to Roe?

(Don't worry i won't twist your words to make it seem like you think abortion is muder).

But also on those grounds you seem accepting of them defining the end of life more than the start...

I'm accepting of defining murder which is a illegal act. Nothing more. You could define it as causing somebody to stop breathing or their heart to stop without having to jump into defining life.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

You're opposed to the death penalty too right?

Yes. I know where you are going of course. For me the issue is with control of the woman's body. This isn't an issue in the case of the death penalty. In either case my position is limiting the government's control over abortion and limiting what it can do in regards to capital punishment so in those regards I do not see it as a contradiction.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Oh no no i wasn't going down that angle POM...

What i was gonna say was that with the DP we now for the most part (apart from our two states and a few others) only use the lethal injection method. (If there were to be a federal execution anytime soon i believe hanging and the chair are still viable though).

Now recently the constitutionality of the DP was questioned on grounds of humanity, but more so is the lethal injection...the way that is defined as best i know is to inject until the point of enough "x" is sent into the body's system to end all life but done in 3 steps. It basically removes all feeling and then ability to breathe and effectively stops the heart as best i know.

That is a very precise method, very accurate and very procedural. Now if it hadn't been for that the use of the DP may have been questionnable due to the cruel and unusual clause of the constitution. But the constitution states clearly death is a punishment usable and enforcable by the goverment. So, in sticking with the constitution would you rather the goverment didn't use precise definitions for the start and end of life and use more traditionalist methods like rope and frying folks? Or would you rather see, what i'm sure you view as a more humane method, the needle, due to the precise definition of the ending of life by the state?

Also just to add murder is to kill someone right? In various forms (degrees etc) and you have homocide, suicide, manslaughter etc all has every different and precise legal definitions that have to be formed by courts, goverment lawyers etc. If we didn't have them then we would just have one routine law of taking someone's life or not and folks would be convicted a lot more often, is that what you want?

Also on the abortion issue you say its okay for religion to define but the only way for that to have some binding effect on anyone would be to have religion have some binding enforcement of some sort. I doubt that you'd want that, and with sciene, well when the issues are argued before the courts or more so when the issue is debated by Congress or whatever the opinions of scientists may and can be at times quoted to strengthen the argument of either and or both side.

No, it's not. Murder is the unlawful killing of someone.

And, as abortion is a lawful procedure it cannot, by definition, be murder...

I could support such a ban in the third trimester, but as that wasn't specified in the question I responded no.

Even if a late-term fetus with a fully-functioning cerebral cortex is defined as a person (which IMO it probably should be), killing it in cases where the mother's life or health is endangered by allowing it to come to term should be called self-defense, not murder.

I could not support any restriction on abortion in the first trimester whatsoever. But it seems to me that if a pregnant woman has six months to terminate the pregnancy, that's plenty of time.

Steve does have a point. Murder is to unlawfully kill somebody. Self defense can involve killing somebody but is not considered murder.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I didn't read Steve's point; i have him on ignore.

But yeah you got the point i was gonna make, you need to define these things and the start of life is no different.

Also if the start of life was defined as at the point of conception then it would by default make abortion illegal anyway. Its the definition that's the problem.