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It's homicide.

By definition an embryo is "offspring". So an embryo in a human being must therefore be the offspring of a human. A fetus is defined as "Fully developed young in a womb or egg" and since this is a definition one must assume that this word is used in the context of a noun. The noun definition of "young" is "offspring", so therefore a fetus of a human must therefore be the offspring of a human. One must then conclude that a fetus and embryo are both human offspring and are the same thing in a different stage of development.

This of course is not enough to prove that this makes embryos and fetuses human so one must move on to the third definition; "child" a child is a "young human being" and also "offspring". Even if one concludes that "young" is an adjective and not a noun in this case, a child is still offspring. A child is the offspring of a human, which means by definition both the embryo and fetus are the same thing as a child, only in different stages of development. Because of this the only possible conclusion one can reach is that embryos and fetuses are human beings.

Murder is the unlawful, premeditated killing of a human being, so because abortion is legal it cannot be "unlawful" and so therefore cannot be murder. However homicide is simply "the killing of a human being" and because of this abortion must therefore be homicide.

I just wanted to make that clear.

All definitions of the words that I used can be found in "Collins Canadian English Dictionary, from the year of 1991".

Edit: I got my friend, who has the most unbiast opinion of anyone I know (He's a choicer, but he's also a gay male so he doesn't like forming strong opinions on the subject. He doesn't think it's any of his business.) to read this over before I posted it. After he finished he told me that I'd swayed him a little. whee

It's more basic, for instance if the police were to find a guy stabbed to death, it would be a homicide. If under further investigation it could be deemed "self-defence" and yet still a homicide, where as it could not be murder for two reasons. #1 it was not premeditated and #2 self-defence is legal.

Also if someone was to get pissed off and kill someone else, but had not planned it, it would be homicide and not murder. This is because it had not been premeditated.

So while the meanings seem the same, homicide is far more general than murder, and unless abortion becomes illegal again it cannot be labeled at "murder".

There is of course the loophole in the definition where when being sentenced it's "murder in the first degree" or whatever. Not "homicide", however when debating with abortion it's better to not use the word murder as the choicers can disprove it quite easily, and it makes the person who used the word look like they don't know what they're talking about.

wow....anyway. I thought this needed to be brought up. Maybe there should be something in a sticky so we all have our terms right. Because this is a good point that will keep on being pointed out.

Toxic stickying her own thread XD

No no you may, first thing every pro-lifer can learn, just as they get new tricks so do we.

It's definately worth seeing to all.

Haha well it wasn't really been read anyway, so no harm done.

Haha, I went for Job Shadowing with my mom on Friday (she works in aboriginal affairs.) and we had the Treaty Day festivals. It was pretty bad there was a lot of "White man steal man! White man evil! Raaaar!"

Aboriginal = Native Canadian. It's more politically correct to call them that than "Indians" (An Indian is someone from India.) I'm from Canada. xp I'll ask my mom's friend Lynne about the Australian thing. She grew up there.

Indians. My preschool/kindergarten teacher taught us to sit like indians. I went on to a lilywhite private school in first grade and my teacher told us to sit pretzel style. I said, no, that's indian style. She told me that'd hurt the indians' feelings. I said why? And then she proceeded to explain racism. I told her my best friend was brown. SHe told me to say African American. I said she was born in Maryland, not Africa. She also said that my ancestors were sinners who hurt my best friend's ancestors. THat didn't bug me until I asked her what sin was. She explained. Then I asked who the hell was this God she kept talking about....I didn't say hell. She explained God. then I was sad. I actually glared at my grandfather and told him he hurt african americans....

Mom and Dad spent an evening explaining that no one in my family got to America until after the civil war, what the civil war was, what slavery was, why people with different skin were treated differently, and thus I lost my colorblindness.

I'm still kinda miffed that I was taught to think of people with different skin colors differently than I think of myself.