Some conservatives call it “partial-birth abortion.” Some liberals call it “late-term abortion.” Some doctors call it “dilate and extract.”

But these terms are all loaded with political connotations, stuffed with excess verbiage and inebriated with multi-syllabic jargon. So let’s be honest and just call it “murder.”

The U.S. Congress recently voted to outlaw the act in question, and soon President Bush’s signature will put a thankful end to the barbaric practice.

The exact details of this form of murder are particularly gruesome. A young, innocent being is slowly pulled — feet first — from his or her mother’s womb. A doctor then violently stabs the child in the back of the neck with a sharpened object (so much for the Hippocratic Oath). Finally, a vacuum-like device is used to inhale the being’s fragile brain and force his or her skull to collapse.

Inexplicably, a number of liberals actually support this heinous act. They make a number of narrow-minded assertions, all claims that would perhaps have merit if placed in the same vacuum as the baby’s brain.

One argument frequently advanced is that the trauma of a young woman being forced to deliver a baby against her will — whether conceived by means of rape, incest or poor sexual judgment — is too scarring for a civilized society to allow.

But the truth is that such trauma — no matter how severe — is not justification for murder.

Any argument that the average woman should not be allowed to undergo an act, but that only women in particularly sticky situations should, creates a continuum which is logically — and morally — indefensible.

How is it that the act is so horrific as to be impermissible in some situations but so humane as to be permissible in others? The truth is that this form of murder is not supported as a strictly elective procedure because the side effect of death is generally recognized.

How, then, do we allow for doctors to cause that death in other situations, like when a woman has been raped? Sexual violation by another person may be among the most abhorrent things in this world, but the idea of “curing” the crime by murdering an innocent is as repulsive as the idea of human sacrifice to appease the gods.

Another argument frequently advanced is that children doomed to a world of poverty or neglect, or with terminal illness, should not be brought into such a tragic existence.

But this premise amounts to little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as it is actually the introduction of a euthanasia argument into a child-murder debate. And even if it is to be momentarily accepted, it is worth nothing that few assisted-suicide advocates would support the practice for non-terminal patients (e.g., a healthy child born into an impoverished world.)

Yet another argument oft advanced in favor of legalizing this form of killing is that it is not the place of society to impose values upon its citizens or to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body.

But the law in question only imposes values to the same extent that run-of-the-mill murder statutes do, and it only informs women’s bodily rights to the same extent society already prohibits the exercising of one’s index finger against a trigger when a human is in the crosshairs.

With this debate also comes a perennial political argument, “It’s going to happen anyway, it might as well be safe.” But a civilized society cannot be deterred by back-alley crimes. Rape happens despite its wanton illegality, and yet we still tell vulnerable women to carry a can of pepper spray, not a condom.

Finally, there are those who contend that the victims in these brutal slayings are not children but rather inanimate objects. This claim seems to, once again, beg the question of why the knife-and-vacuum procedure doesn’t just become a form of regular birth control.

But assertions that fetuses are not living beings tend to be advanced by those radical murderers who see nothing wrong with abortion as a form of birth control and, conversely, subscribe to the Jay and Silent Bob line of thought (abortion clinics are great places to pick up loose women). If, for these people, the mere fact that a brain does exist is not reason enough to believe in the humanity of late-term fetuses, then perhaps the old bumper-sticker slogan may cause a much-needed epiphany, “If it’s not a child, you’re not pregnant.”

Last week, this column entertained a debate over the death penalty, something over which reasonable people can disagree. And the idea of state-sponsored execution is weighty and deserving of ink because it raises questions about what we, as a society, should do with regard to our least moral, most brutal savages — those who kill others.

But there is general agreement that the death penalty is only fitting for those who have murdered.

So, how then can we enter into a debate about the killing of those who have yet to even have the opportunity to err in their ways? These are surely our society’s most innocent citizens.

Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in rhetoric.