I don't think 'the authorities' are the ones that dictate this, Captain Trips.

I think you need to take your problem up with Oxford English, Merriam-Webster and American Heritage.

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

Thats why I did say:

...what forms of murder are tolerable and allowable in a civilized society.... here:

One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

It is the "deliberate killing" that this argument seems to revolve around. That and when a human becomes a human.

Abortion certainly IS deliberate killing.

Deliberate killing made "legal" by some appointed "authorities" who obviously had their heads up their robes.

Don't tell me. Tell steve.

1: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought
2 a: something very difficult or dangerous <the traffic was murder> b: something outrageous or blameworthy <getting away with murder>

murder - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Abortion is certainly done with thinking ahead (aforethought). That malice is involved might be argued. I would argue that it IS done with malice. It's done thinking that this tiny person needs to go. Needs to be "taken out of me."

Knowing full well that this person will die by taking it out of you at that stage.

That some appointed "authorities" made it LEGAL and lawful to DO so, makes SOME of us able to accept this form of murder as perfectly Ok. Even when it is NOT perfectly Ok.

A small group of anointed ones made a "law" and some of us are willing to so easily change our definitions of murder.

1: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.

Now what USED to be considered unlawfully killing a person is not unlawful. So we think that magically makes it different.

People whose minds are so moldable would more easily accept the following ALSO:

If "the authorities" made it legal to kill your neighbor when they're being too noisy, all of a sudden by magic, it's not murder.

Not, by magic, but by the changing of the law. When "unlawful" is part of the definition of a word, then changes in the law are going to change that to which it applies, no matter what color and style of font you use in protest. You and the PETA people with their "fur is murder" signs are going to have to suffer together in semantical outrage.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Yes, I read it, and the answer, by definition, is NONE. Because if a killing is tolerable and allowable, then by definition it's not murder. For purposes of the present discussion it's acceptable (to me anyway) that we use a moral definition of murder rather than a purely legal one, but any such definition must recognize that there are types of deliberate killing that are NOT murder, and some of the classic ones are things you are saying ARE: execution of criminals, killing in self-defense, killing by soldiers in combat. These are not "tolerable and allowable murder," they are NOT murder, plain and simple.

But in fact, even that's beside the point. This entire argument of yours is a sideshow and addresses nothing that is really in dispute.

No. What some people consider unlawfully killing a person is now the lawful killing of a non-person. It was once the unlawful killing of a non-person. Didn't you understand what I was saying earlier? You're going to get absolutely nowhere with an argument like this, because you're completely failing to address the key point of disagreement, which isn't over whether something is being killed, nor whether it's being done intentionally, nor whether it's being done in self-defense, but whether the organism being killed is a person.

That's what you need to address, and what you are completely failing to even TRY to address as far as I can see.

Dilettante, I know you're trying to pass me batons with words like bodypart and identity on them. However, I'm not grabbing any because it's utterly irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that a relationship between parties exists, temporarily or otherwise, such that the access to a right or privilege of one party restricts the access to a right or privilege of another party. That's really all there is to it.

Look, man, piss and bitch and moan and whine all you want. Abortion is a lawful procedure. As a result, it's impossible to classify it as "murder".

The pro-lifers might not like that, but that doesn't matter.

Not an iota...

That would be true. It wouldn't be murder. Of course, such an idiotic example deserves little more commentary than that...

So, words like "crime" and "unlawfully" just disappeared into thin air?

Captain Trips, have you ever stolen a free sample? After all, taking something that isn't yours without paying for it is stealing.

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

Yeah ok

I did address that much earlier:

What we're really arguing about is our opinions of when a human becomes a human.

Some of us beleive that when we slide out of the holiest of holies, we're sprinkled with a sort a magic dust that makes us human. Others beleive that a human is formed when the male sperm and female egg combine their DNA to make a separate entity.

A separate entity that is genetically a human.

It's really an argument about how much each of us values life.

One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

You said:

What some people consider unlawfully killing a person is now the lawful killing of a non-person.

If we call what we're killing a "non-person" it's then ok to kill it.

Do you see how language use, redefinitions etc. can be used to make almost ANYTHING seem right, just and "rational" ?

IF a population of people is willing to accept such convenient changing of terminologies and definitions that is. IF a population of people has lost its ability to make rational and common sense judgements.

You can make almost ANYTHING seem sensible and ok in these conditions.

That doesn't MAKE them sensible and ok.

That it is lawful doesn't mean that it is acceptable or right.

The law is wrong.

It is murder.

That last post really sums up this impossible and tortured position pretty well...

The law is wrong when it comes to the law.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

You look good doing that dance

This from the person who posted a dictionary definition that completely flew in the face of his point. Heh.

Edit: For some reason, I'm reminded of a Simpson's moment where Homer says "Webster's defines 'wedding' as the process of removing weeds from one's garden".

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Excuse me, but "when we become human" is NOT what's in dispute. What's in dispute is when the fetus becomes a PERSON.

"Human" is a purely biological term that can describe a lot of tissues that aren't people. My nail clippings are human. What I leave in the toilet is human. Sticking strictly with what is not only human but also alive, my blood is human, and every time I cut myself shaving, I "destroy human life." Is that murder? Or (since it's MY blood after all) is it suicide? Sticking even more strictly with what is not only human and alive, but has the potential to become a person, does a woman kill a person every month when she has her period, unless she becomes pregnant?

All of this is ridiculous, of course, but it's meant to point up the absurdity of an argument from genetics, or the tendency of anti-abortion folks to muddy the waters with irrelevant terms like "human" or "life," when those are not at all what's at issue. What's at issue is the definition, not of human, and not of life, but of person.

No, it's not, and as long as you continue making that mistake you are going to completely fail to communicate anything to anybody. Everyone here values "life" equally. It's a dispute about what constitutes being a human being, specifically whether an embryo at conception meets the criteria. You think it does. Why?

Of course. And if we call it a person then it's not OK to kill it. But I have excellent reason to call it a non-person: it has no brain, it has no personality, it has no mind, it has no feelings, it doesn't give a damn whether it lives or dies, it will not suffer if it's killed. It has the