I didn't look at the Ohio statute but in California murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person or a fetus with malice aforethought. There is nothing to prevent a state from defining murder as such (though I could guess you could make an argument that punishment could be excessive if a fetus is not a person). With regard to abortion rights, Roe vs. Wade did not establish whether a fetus is a person but held that a state had a right to preserve potential life and balanced that state interest against the mother's privacy rights.

In other words, when a fetus is killed by a third party the State can define it as murder because it is not having to deal with the privacy rights of a mother.

so if a woman is really upset she got pregnant and can't stand the thought of having a baby, how could this have happened? She gets rid of this awful predicament by means of abortion, I guess that's doing so with malice and she should be accused of murder?

A mother can kill a fetus but what of a born child?
It really makes no sense the two positions conflict yet some have no problem defining the two when it simply fits into their own mind so well.

freeman2 wrote:I didn't look at the Ohio statute but in California murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person or a fetus with malice aforethought. There is nothing to prevent a state from defining murder as such (though I could guess you could make an argument that punishment could be excessive if a fetus is not a person). With regard to abortion rights, Roe vs. Wade did not establish whether a fetus is a person but held that a state had a right to preserve potential life and balanced that state interest against the mother's privacy rights.

In other words, when a fetus is killed by a third party the State can define it as murder because it is not having to deal with the privacy rights of a mother.

That's my understanding as well. Although it does stretch the imagination because it seems to put the right of privacy as constitutionally in the same league as the right not to be murdered. I'm all for privacy, but like free speech or free press, it is not in the same league.