The argument that abortion is murder of a human being and murder is illegal, therefore abortion should be illegal, is a begging the question argument. This argument assumes that abortion is murder and should therefore be made illegal since murder is illegal. This begs the question, is abortion murder? Abortion is the “ending of a pregnancy before the fetus, unborn child, can live independently outside the mother (Abortion, Summer Wellness Programs).” Since the fetus cannot live outside the mother at the time of the abortion the fetus is not truly alive yet. The fetus is attached to the mother by the placenta and the umbilical cord and its health is completely dependent on her health and so cannot be seen as a separate being, it is a part of the mother. It …show more content…
The definition of murder is “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought (Merriam-Webster).” There are plenty of legal abortion clinics meaning abortion is neither a crime or illegal. As said before, a fetus is aborted before it can live on its own outside the body. It has no brain or self awareness and therefore cannot be considered a person yet. Since murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person, abortion cannot be considered murder. Abortions are not performed with malicious aforethought either as murders are. Usually you would murder someone because you do not like them, therefore you would murder them with malice. Abortions, though, are typically done either because there is something wrong with the fetus, i.e. a deformity, or to protect the mothers health, either physical or mental. The mothers are not going around getting pregnant because they want to kill “babies”. You cannot consider abortion to be murder since abortion is legal and you are not killing someone as it is a fetus that is not yet alive and there is no malicious intent in aborting the fetus. This argument is a fallacy because it assumes that abortion is