It Doesn't Matter if "Abortion is Killing a Person"

On abortion up to the moment of birth...and beyond?

When teaching a criminal law class, a professor doesn’t tell students that we begin with the definition of murder and then determine what the law is from there. Quite the opposite. We start with the idea that there is a prototypical kind of conduct we would like to prevent, and then look for mitigating factors that might make a person’s behavior that looks similar to that bad thing a lesser crime or not a crime at all. If someone intentionally kills another person out of anger instead of doing it with premeditation, we might call that second-degree murder, and if you just punch someone and they hit their head and die, that can be manslaughter. If someone pulls a gun out and points it at you, then you have the right to shoot them first, and it’s not a crime at all. Conduct we think is bad enough is slapped with the label “murder,” or a lesser charge.

Once we’ve considered all relevant factors, we construct definitions that the law then applies to. To reiterate, the order goes like this.

1. Decide what conduct is bad, based on utilitarian and moral considerations.

2. Construct definitions that separate stuff that’s really bad (1st degree murder), stuff that’s less bad (2nd degree murder, manslaughter, etc.), and things that superficially resemble the bad thing but are different and we don’t want to punish at all (self-defense).

3. Apply those definitions to the real world.

The definitions themselves are not the point. They’re tools we use to classify different kinds of behavior and have workable rules that lead to a just and better society.