Abortion and Murder

For my purposes here I'll rely on California Law and the California Penal Code. Other states may have slightly different law, however I have no intent to cover the nation with this blog posting.

THE LAW

CPC 187 - Murder Defined

(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought. 

(b) This section shall not apply to any person who commits an act that results in the death of a fetus if any of the following apply: (1) The act complied with the Therapeutic Abortion Act, Article 2 (commencing with Section 123400) of Chapter 2 of Part 2 of Division 106 of the Health and Safety Code. (2) The act was committed by a holder of a physician's and surgeon' s certificate, as defined in the Business and Professions Code, in a case where, to a medical certainty, the result of childbirth would be death of the mother of the fetus or where her death from childbirth, although not medically certain, would be substantially certain or more likely than not. (3) The act was solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus. 

(c) Subdivision (b) shall not be construed to prohibit the prosecution of any person under any other provision of law.

Under California State Law, a fetus is separated from the definition of a human being - presumably because it is not 'independently viable'. However the punishment for murder is identical - unless the life is taken by a mother or a physician.

So should you kill a pregnant mother, you could be/would be charged with a double murder. If the mother of the child solicits you to aid or abet in the murder of her unborn child, it's legal.

QUANDRY

Am I the only one who doesn't understand why it's MURDER in one case and somehow socially acceptable in another? If you presume that an unborn child is somehow less than human - how could you call its death under any circumstances a MURDER? It simply doesn't make sense.

The Democrats really hated Sarah Palin because of her stand on this issue. 

Where do you stand?