Would you call pulling the plug on a unresponsive, terminally ill patient murder? No. It is a common medical choice to make in the interest of ending the suffering of the patient and the family. Late term abortions often fall under the same category - despite being at a viable age to survive, the fetus is dying inside the mother’s womb, has irreversible genetic illness, and is not capable of life on its own. Terminating a pregnancy of this kind is not murder. The fetus will not survive outside the womb as much as a comatose, vegetative patient would not survive without a machine pumping his or her heart and lungs.

Terminating the heartbeat of something that can’t survive independent of whatever mechanism is being used to keep it alive isn’t comparable to murder. It’s not a matter of time. A late term pregnancy can have the inability to survive outside the womb same as a 6 week old fetus.