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Since you obviously have lived under a rock for the last 230 years, let me bring you up to speed: This is a democratic republic. A republic is a form of government in which law is primary: law outweighs the will of the majority and the will of the minority; law binds the members of the Executive, Legislative and the Judicial branches of government; law binds all the citizens. Therefore law is not subject to definitions of convenience; nor is it subject change or alteration based on the emotional gushings and ejaculations of any individual; it stands alone and separate from every influence except that which creates law, the deliberative legislative process.

Now that you've been brought up to speed, you'll have no trouble realizing that actions to which law is applicable are not defined by the emotional reactions of individuals or even external or ex post facto logical analysis but ONLY by the definitions which apply to and are recognized within the law itself. And while those definitions exist they are utterly binding and utterly immutable unless unbound and made mutable by proceedings which are intrinsically and by definition legal in structure and process.

Therefore, use of the word "murder" as applicable to abortion, except as an acknowledged casual colloquialism, is strictly illegitmate.

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So then you don't believe that if an American breaks the law in a foreign country he's subject to the penalties of law of that country?

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If the dictator can kill based on laws he imposes, can't those who overthrow him impose laws too, or must they be confined to using the dictator's old laws? ...And do you know the word "retroactive," and understand what it means? Well, you have no trouble understanding, then, that the laws imposed or reinstated by the folks who overthrow the dictator may be retroactively applied to the previous administration, and always are when it comes to the dictator himself and his henchmen.

When a dictator makes the law he calls the shots, even if those shots end up moving in your immediate direction. When a representative republican body makes the law, it has effectively called the shots even if those shots come back to bite certain members who have broken the law. The law is impersonal, Condottiere; it's a tool, and like any tool it can be misused (or at least be perceived to have been misused).

If a dictator decides you've broken one of his laws - even if he had to make it up on the spot just then - and kills you for it, it's a legal act at that moment, in that place, by that person. Tomorrow that could all change; but today it's the law.

My suggestion to you at this point is that you should skip on down to your local college and enroll in some Criminal Justice and Constitutional Law courses. You'll find them illuminating.

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That is how law works. And respect for the law is characterized by the acknowledgement that this is how law must work or else anarchy or some system other than republican is inevitable.

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One may of course make a personal moral choice to violate any law: ideally, though, only as long as one also has the moral fortitude to accept whatever consequences follow violation of the law.

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One may of course make a personal moral choice to violate any law: ideally, though, only as long as one also has the moral fortitude to accept whatever consequences follow violation of the law.

For example: if you and yours wish to "violate" the law that makes abortions legally obtainable, then feel free to do so ... by not getting abortions. Easy, huh? ...Note that preventing another who wants a legal abortion from getting a legal abortion is not the same thing as choosing to not partake of abortion yourself.

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Your perception that I recognize no authority but the law is what makes you sick. Of course your perception is in error. Comes along a law I feel I cannot morally abide, I won't hesitate to break it. Until then, the law is the law, and republics live and die by the laws they make and their citizens' willingness to recognize those laws as legitimate.