Nobody believes abortion is murder

[A Theist]

I'm confused as to what we're arguing about. Is it personhood? Because a person is defined as a self-sufficed individual.
Is it being human? Because isn't that when the dna from the egg and sperm combine?
What is being argued!? Where do we start? Is there any common ground where we can say an embryo is not life, or a fetus is life?
Why is potential life considered life? When it's only potential life?
I'm so confused by you guys. I know my stance on the matter, but that doesn't matter in relation to everyone else and that's what's important.
The constitutionality in US law mentions viability?

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Overview of Supreme Court Abortion Law

Roe ruled (7-2) that though states did have an interest in protecting fetal life, such interest was not "compelling" until the fetus was viable (placing viability at the start of the third trimester).2 Thus, all state abortion laws that forbade abortion during the first six months of pregnancy were thereby invalidated. Third trimester abortions were declared to be legal only if the pregnancy threatened the life or health of the mother. The Doe verdict, however, defined "health of the mother" in such broad terms, that any prohibitions to 3rd trimester abortions were essentially eliminated.3 According to Justice Harry Blackmun's majority opinion, a woman's health includes her "physical, emotional, psychological, (and) familial" well-being, and should include considerations about the woman's age.4 "All these factors may relate to health," Blackmun argued, so as to give "the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment."5 In other words, if a woman is upset about her 3rd trimester pregnancy (psychological health), her doctor has the necessary legal basis to abort.

In 1976, abortion again made its way to the Supreme Court, in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, where all state laws requiring spousal or parental consent were thrown out. Thornburg v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a 1986 case that was split 5-4, struck down all manner of abortion restrictions including the requirement to inform women about abortion alternatives, the requirement to educate women about prenatal development, the requirement to inform women of the potential risks of abortion, the requirement to keep records of abortion, and the requirement that 3rd trimester abortions be performed in such a way as to spare the life of the viable child. All these were argued to be violations of a woman's right to privacy. In 1989, however, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Roe was dealt a serious blow. The court, in a 5-4 opinion, let stand a Missouri statute stating that human life begins at conception, and declared that the state does have a "compelling" interest in fetal life throughout pregnancy.6 The trimester/viability framework of Roe was basically thrown out, but Justice O'Connor, despite arguing for essentially the same thing in prior case law, withheld her endorsement from the portion of the Webster opinion which would have actually overturned Roe. As such, federal abortion laws remained largely unchanged, but the rationale for such laws began to crumble. Many states took this opportunity to put more restrictive state measures in place. In 1990, two cases (Hodgson v. Minnesota and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health) ruled that states requiring parental consent before a minor could have an abortion must allow for a judicial bypass.

In 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey reached the Supreme Court. The right to legal abortion was upheld in the Casey decision, but a 24-hour waiting period was put in place, as well as an informed consent requirement, a parental consent provision, and a record keeping mandate. States were also given more discretion as to when viability begins. Casey was decided 5-4, but the opinion of the Court was essentially divided into three factions. Justices Blackmun and Stevens did not endorse the new burdens placed on legal abortion, but were willing to concede to gain the support of Justices O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter, who believed that Casey was a happy medium between giving states more control while still upholding the basic conclusions of Roe. Justices Rehnquist, White, Scalia and Thomas dissented altogether, believing Roe had no Constitutional basis to begin with and thereby felt no obligation to uphold it. Today, the language of Casey, more than Roe, serves as the dominant precedent in abortion law.

The last abortion-related case to reach the Supreme Court was Gonzales v. Carhart, which was decided in 2007 by a 5-4 vote. It upheld a 2003 congressional ban on the abortion procedure known as intact dilation and evacuation—also known as dilation and extraction (D&X) or partial-birth abortion. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 came in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) that Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban violated the Federal Constitution as interpreted by Roe and Casey. Late-term abortionist, LeRoy Carhart, brought the suit against Nebraska Attorney General, Don Stenburg. The verdict was decided 5-4 on the basis that the Nebraska law did not include an exception for preserving the "health" of the mother–though it did include an exception if D&X was deemed necessary to save the life of the mother. The Court rejected Nebraska's contention that "safe alternatives" to partial-birth abortion made the health exception unnecessary. Three years later, Congress essentially reversed the Court by concluding that there was "a moral, medical, and ethical consensus that partial-birth abortion is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited."7 The federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act also defined the procedure more specifically than the Nebraska statute had done previously. When LeRoy Carhart challenged the constitutionality of the ruling, the Eighth Circuit of Appeals ruled in his favor, causing U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. The 2007 verdict upheld the ban, ruling that it was not overly vague nor that the lack of a health exception imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion. Though the arguments had changed very little between 2000 and 2007, the make up of the Court had. The retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor (who opposed the ban in 2000) and William Rehnquist, along with the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, ultimately reversed the earlier outcome.

Despite, the legal wranglings which are documented in the cases above, abortion law has remained virtually unchanged since Roe was first decided. The single decision of seven, non-elected justices continues to define federal abortion policy decades after it first invalidated 200 years of state law.

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Personhood is actually defined in many ways, both legally and philosophically. At times in our country our laws denied personhood to slaves, women, children, and to those who didn't own property...by law they had very limited to no rights at all that the courts had to recognize...Were those laws just and right that denied personhood to those people? As far as I see it, life begins when the egg is fertilized...if there were no life in it, it wouldn't grow and develop...I don't buy into the potential life crap...it's either life, or it isn't...the 'potential life' term is just a campaigning strategy by the pro-abortion crowd to desensitize the public to abortion.