Why the "Abortion is Murder" Position can be Problematic

I happen to be pro-choice but I think I should lay out the legal problem faced when anyone argues that “abortion is murder” but then turns around and tries to argue that it is acceptable in the case of rape, incest, saving the life of the mother, ensuring the health of the mother, or for birth defect reasons.  Perhaps I am missing something that people who are pro-life think, but do believe that it is important to deal with this from the standpoint of the law and why the “abortion is murder” argument is highly problematic for those who want some exceptions (it is perfectly consistent if you demand that there be absolutely no exceptions whatsoever regardless of the circumstances, though this does lead to a different problem and that is the denial of the mother’s agency, but I will leave that for another time and place).

Necessity is different from self-defense.  One can never murder a person simply in order to survive even if the only way to survive is to terminate the life of one of the individuals.  For example, if you were in an escape room with eight others and the only way to escape the room is to have one person murdered (you are not allowed to kill yourself to save the others), the law would treat this as a murder, even though, by necessity, the only way for seven of you to survive is to kill one.

On the other hand, if someone does try to kill you so as to escape the room, you are permitted to defend yourself since self-defense is a valid defense to murder.  Thus, ironically, the only way out of such an escape room is to kill the person who is trying to kill you.

Since fetuses do not try to kill their host mother, self-defense is not a valid defense even to save the mother’s life.  However, if the mother were to try to kill the fetus, the fetus would under the law be allowed to then kill the mother in self-defense.  This presents a problem, of course, since the fetus often cannot survive without the mother.

Hopefully, this comment helps people understand the issue that pro-life individuals need to face when dealing with the exceptions of rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother, which is why there are really only two tenable positions in the pro-life/pro-choice debate: either you believe that abortion is murder, in which case there can be absolutely no exceptions, or you believe that abortion is not murder.  If you believe that abortion is not murder, you may still set limitations on abortion but these then must be based on public policy arguments (i.e., likely a utilitarian calculus).

To understand from where I get the “necessity is not a defense to murder” argument, please see the court case of R v Dudley and Stephens (1884).