text: when is an abortion no longer an abortion but murder? acording to our laws, 1 second before a baby is born, it is part of the woman, but 2 seconds later it is its own individual person. could someone tell me what the us defines as child birth, because theoreticly, a person who is not classified under this definition in not "alive" and can therefore be killed with no problem. i want to know what the thought process is here, and where i went wrong. morally, abortion is a murder if the baby is killed anytime after conception.  legally, it's not murder until somebody is convicted of the crime of murder which is rarely pursued by the authorities after the deliberate killing of a baby