Abortion Rhetoric

Chris Matthews, who apparently believes "there has to be some conditions set here when you have a late-term abortion," discussed the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas Monday on Hardball with William Saletan and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly. Matthews, who can be annoying, aggravating, or (in the case of Barack Obama, video below) awestruck, made one critical point and Saletan another:

SALETAN: Politically, no, but morally, I think it exposes a concession that this is not literally murder, that we are not to treat it literally like murder.

MATTHEWS: You know, I always ask people, Ceci, you know, rhetorically

not just rhetorically, but, When you say it‘s murder, as opposed to killing—you say “murder,” that‘s a legal term. And you start using terms like that, do you really think a woman, for example, should go to penitentiary for having an abortion performed on her? Do you think a person should serve any time for that? And inevitably, the answer is no. So there is a kind of an intellectual break point here, isn‘t there? And I think it is clearly in effect today in the aftermath of this murder.

SALETAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: I‘m just talking...

SALETAN: And none of these pro-life organizations—not a single bill that they have proposed has ever had a penalty for the woman who procures the abortion.

MATTHEWS: Why not?

SALETAN: Because they don‘t literally believe that she is a murderer.

CONNOLLY: And...

MATTHEWS: But they believe who is—who commits the murder then?

SALETAN: Well, it‘s a contract hit, if you want to use that—that...

MATTHEWS: But then, if that‘s true, then she should be guilty, too.

SALETAN: Exactly. But they don‘t propose it...

MATTHEWS: If you believe that logic.

SALETAN: Right. Just...

When you say it's murder, as opposed to just killing- you say "murder," that's a legal term. Dictionary.com defines "murder" in law as "the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law." The freedictionary. com defines murder as "the killing of a human being by a sane person, with intent, malice aforethought (prior intention to kill the particular victim or anyone who gets in the way), and with no legal excuse or authority" and specifies

Death of an unborn child who is "quick" (fetus is moving) can be murder, provided there was premeditation, malice, and no legal authority. Thus, abortion is not murder under the law.

And none of these pro-life organizations—not a single bill that they have proposed has ever had a penalty for the woman who procures the abortion. Thus, if abortion were prohibited (on the basis, obviously, of it being an act of killing a human being), the woman would be not only involved in, but the catalyst behind, a contract killing. Presumably, pro-life organizations and politicians assiduously avoid including the woman as culpable in this "murder" for strategic reasons, that it would undermine (probably destroy) popular support for any anti-abortion legislation.

The right routinely accuses the mainstream media of being "liberal" and no doubt the issue of abortion features prominently in this perspective. It then is curious that Matthews and Saletan are two of the few members of the profession to note the intellectual dishonesty of the pro-life movement: referring to abortion inaccurately as "murder" and the woman pursuing an abortion as "victim" rather than hitman.