Thomas Smith biked off to his violin lesson with his curly, dirty-blonde hair rustling in the wind. As always, Thomas had worked endlessly to perfect his newest piece, and was ready to show his teacher the results of his work. Thomas biked slowly, hoping to delay showing his parents his report card. Thomas’ report card was nothing out of the ordinary: he had received A’s in all his science classes and C’s in everything in the humanities. Luckily for him, playing the violin would allow him to take his mind off the yelling he would receive later at home; after all, music was his true calling. He knew his parents would force him to stop playing baseball and soccer until he eradicated the letter “C” from his report card, even though he was the captain of both teams. Thomas, however, would not have the chance to play baseball for his school team or attend the University of Texas in the future. He will not have the chance to play his favorite concerto in Carnegie Hall or experience the many joys life has to offer. For Thomas, like 46 million children each day, was the victim of a murder, the victim of an abortion.

When Thomas was conceived in his mother’s womb, Thomas became a unique person; likewise, all fetuses are people. Though clearly not a fully grown adult, a fetus has unique DNA, different from that of the mother or father, almost immediately after conception—the very DNA that could determine that Thomas would have dirty-blonde hair, enjoy math, loathe the humanities, excel in sports, work diligently, and play music effortlessly. Each fetus, then, is a unique, albeit immature, person, distinct from everyone else in the world—but, like all young people, with dreams to conceive, aspirations to fulfill, and loves to find.

The government of South Carolina agrees completely: in 1997, its high court ruled that a fetus is subject to the same child abuse laws as young children. If a fetus is equal to a child, then how is a fetus not a person? Jon E. Dougherty holds the same: “… [Humans are never] ‘fully-developed.’ We’re not born ‘complete.’ We grow, change, mature, and age constantly, which means we’re always ‘developing,’ and we develop though the first nine months of our lives attached to a ‘host’—our mothers… But life has to begin somewhere. We don’t go from ‘nothing’ to adulthood....It begins when it begins—at the moment a human being is biologically ‘under construction.’”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines murder as “the crime of unlawfully killing a person.” Since fetuses are humans, abortion is, by definition, murder. After all, the termination of a fetus strips a unique boy or girl of all of his or her potential, living spirit, and life.

Many states treat the killing a pregnant mother as a double murder. Paradoxically, many of those same states don’t recognize that abortion is a criminal act. Worse than engaging in hypocrisy, these states simply ignore the unalienable rights of man, the first of which is life.

The committing of murder notwithstanding, the proponents of abortion cite its practice as an economic necessity, a way to lift financial burden from the poorer families of America while decreasing the number of poorer children in America. Implicit, however, in the aforementioned argument is the notion that life has a monetary value, as well as the notion that less-productive people have no place in American society. Are we, then, going to pre-select Americans into society as the Stalinists, Nazis, and Spartans did, discarding the unwanted? Do some people have a more compelling right to be American than others? Do citizens have the right to decide who lives and who dies? As the answer to all such questions is a clear “no,” it can only follow that any economic argument for abortion, as well as any argument ignoring the homicidal nature of abortion, has no standing against the value of life.

Abortion, then, doesn’t save potential parents from the expendetures of parenthood, or protect unwanted children from unfavorable lives. Abortion cannot be “just” terminating a “fetus,” a creature entirely dissimilar from a man. Indeed, Thomas Smith never learned the cold hard truth that his parents sold his childhood, his marriage, and his future for an easier life and extra spending money. The 126,000 children aborted each day have not been allowed the chance to develope into productive members of society, for they have had their lives exchanged for convenience. Next time you are spending time with your family or friends consider the affects abortion may have played in your own life. How many of your potential friends were never allowed to meet you, or maybe your future spouse never entered this world because his or her parents did not want to deal with the hassel of parenthood. Abortion defies our own laws and challenges our ethics. Murder should not be tolerated in any form, regardless of the victims stage of human developement. Simply put, life is priceless and we should treat it as such.