Abortion in America

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/05/14/us/ap-us-abortion-clinic-deaths.html?ref=us&_r=0

One recent even that has come to take place is that a 72 year old male abortion doctor, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, has been sentenced multiple life sentences for performing illegal abortions in the state of Pennsylvania. When I first heard this news, it was by word of mouth and the first question I asked was, "Is abortion legal in the state of Pennsylvania?" The reason why is this question is important is because it sets the moral grounds for the actions taken by the state. For a moment, I believed that the state was charging him for murder, even though abortion there is legal. What scared me is that most of the debate on abortion is centered around whether abortion is in fact murder. If a county or local jurisdiction accused and convicted this man of murder from the perspective that murder and abortion are not one in the same, but that the manner in which these abortions were conducted be interpreted as murder and not abortion and therefore different from traditional abortion, I would have believed that a great injustice had been done, much similarly to the killing of abortion clinicians done by Christian extremists, because the state did not securely define abortion and that this doctor's practice had been violated in a major and unmoral if not unlawful manner. However, this is not the case. In fact, this doctor was performing abortions past the legal term limit, and was conscious of his actions. Therefore his actions to waiver his rights to appeal to avoid the death penalty does not seem immorally grounded, and the actions taken by the state are completely legitimate. My initial confusion led me to the immediate decision to post on this issue to point out that clear definitions need to be characterized by the state, regardless of what one may believe them to be. Accusations of murder cannot be founded on loosely defined laws and interpretations of those laws on a round about manner, so that what this doctor does is abortion and legal while what that doctor does is murder and illegal. This is a sad case of a person taking his beliefs into action because of its unlawful character. An important outcome of this trial is that he waived his rights to an appeal, so that the case cannot work it's way into the supreme court.