Jonathan: I think you’d get an argument going with Bill Pryor as to whether
abortion is murder. “Murder” is a legal term, referring to a certain kind
of killing against the law of the land. Plainly abortion is not currently
murder. You may think it should be, and you may be right, but as a matter
of legal definition, it just isn’t. My guess is that Pryor would say that
abortion is a certain kind of killing against the law of God: that an
officer of the court must administer the law of the land: and that where the
law of the land conflicts with the law of God, there are several different
paths a person of conscience can follow, including the path of administering
the law of the land faithfully as an officer, while striving in one’s
capacity as a private citizen, through argument and persuasion, to nudge
man’s laws into closer conformity with God’s. Greater goods have to be
wieghed against lesser ones, the present against the future. If officers of
the courts balked every time they were obliged to do something that pained
their consciences, there would be precious little justice administered in
the U.S.A.