Slate's William Saletan seems to think he's come up with a brilliant rhetorical device to convince abortion opponents to stop calling the procedure “murder.” But I wonder if he considered the possibility that he might not persuade everyone - and if he considered how some of those he doesn't persuade might react to things like this:

If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller.

...

The people who kill abortion providers are the ones who don't flinch. They're like the veterans you sometimes see in war documentaries, quietly recounting what they faced and did. You think you're pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of the other people who say such things in polls, you don't mean it literally. There's you, and then there are the people who lock arms outside the clinics. And then there are the people who bomb them. And at the end of the line, there's the guy who killed George Tiller.

If you don't accept what he did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions-not just a few this month, but millions down the line-without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.