Axiomatic reasoning and culure wars

I can't say the anti-choice movement is starting from a false axiom. How can I prove that killing a fetus isn't the same as killing a newborn? How can I prove that my own solution, taking into account the requirement of a functioning nervous system to feel pain, is correct? If one believes the nervous system isn't the hardware of the soul, they're starting from a different axiom, one difficult if not impossible to improve. Moreover, my own standard forces me to acknowledge that animals feel pain, including the cow-and-a-half or so I eat every year or so in Jumbo Jacks. Logic isn't going to get me anywhere in this debate. But perhaps my own human fallibility might:

What other axioms lead people to violate their own standard, with only a small likelihood of changing behavior to match the standard? (I probably won't stop eating hamburgers until I have my first, or maybe second bypass. I am, under my own axiom, a murderer of cows, a taker of life.)

What happens if the axiom, "Abortion is murder" is carried out in reality? Let's overturn Roe vs. Wade briefly and ask what changes would follow in the wake of criminalizing abortion (as murder, lest we appear soft on crime just because the perpetrator is a woman and the assassin holds a medical degree):

1. Rapid exodus of women from states that ban abortion. A woman has little reason to move to a state that has banned abortion, even if she agrees with it. We like to retain choice, we humans, and even if giving it up would make a good symbolic statement, we generally don't go that far in support of a cause. Rapid outflow of women means rapid outflow of heterosexual men (then gay marriage will HAVE to be banned, just to keep the population balanced -- Alabama doesn't want to be left with a bunch of gays in the jury pool empathizing with the accused because her shoes are fabulous).

2. Some states have the death penalty. Some have the death penalty for people under 18. Unless abortion is defined as SOMETHING OTHER THAN MURDER, there would eventually be the well-publicized (global and national) case of a thirteen-year-old girl, her parents and her doctor all implicated in abortion-murder, with at least the main offenders (the girl, who ordered the "hit" and the doctor who carried out with "cold-blooded efficiency") being exposed to the death penalty. She's tried as a juvenile (imagine how it would look if the country that condemned the Taliban to slow death for cruelty to women executed a teenage girl, rape or no rape, as if she were an adult) and has until she's 18 to ponder her evil act in detention. The doctor is, of course, executed, with appropriate cheering and waving of signs on the lawn outside the prison. The family gets time as accessories. Pretty ugly. Of course, it could be worse -- she could be fifteen and be tried as an adult. As in Afghanistan, when law loses its heart, culture crumbles to the ground as all the professionals, intellectuals, artists, gays (and their gay money, which no one refuses) flee an environment of cold repression and vindictive justice. Axioms are heartless -- you can be right (or at least no one can prove you wrong) about the axiom, and wrong in the conclusion, even if the logic is a flawless straight line... to insanity.

3. The law would almost immediately be adjusted so that abortion isn't defined as murder in the first degree (implying the woman isn't of sound enough mind to plan the abortion -- so how did she schedule it ahead of time?) but something more like manslaughter, some kind of reckless accident, like stabbing someone with scissors while skipping around a playground on LSD. The girl gets a lighter sentence (more signs and vocal displays by people who think she got off too easy) and the doctor is either given death or significant prison time. This means, not only are a lot of tax dollars now being used to inflict unnecessary suffering on women, their doctors, families, careers and whatnot, but the law is no longer reflecting the moral sentiment that created it! This is typical of axiomatic systems driven by punitive males: logic becomes so perfect, so absolutely right and unassailable, that actions spin out beyond the limits pluralistic culture can handle. If my logic is unquestionable and my axioms irrefutable, how can my actions be subject to restraint by civil authorities? Who has the authority to punish those who punish those whom God himself has condemned? Depends on whether the one who speaks for God also acts as his executioner, or eggs on the stoning mob when it finds a fresh victim who "should have known better".

If we can agree that abortion is different from murder, different from most crimes that involve victims (I'm certainly not afraid she'll abort ME if she goes free) and different from crime in general, in that there is no malice toward the embryonic victim, no intent to do harm, and no agreement in our culture on when human life begins. Taking axioms too far, even if they make absolute, perfect sense and the logic seems pure as the aroma of piety emanating from pro-punishment prophets of divine judgment, produces chaos in cultures that depend on freedom, differences of opinion and creative ways of channeling them into activities other than violence. When we present axioms as absolute and opposed, the mentally unbalanced can easily fall under the sway of the logic and rightness of them, and act them out in ways that undermine democracy as well as reason. We can be right, without having to witness the horrific consequences of being right with power. Just give up the power to punish, and let God judge, while showing compassion for people you believe are making the wrong decisions. Punishment is the kind of power people can't help but abuse, however right it feels to oppress a wrongdoer in the name of righteousness.

Besides, imagine late-night comedians around the globe, commenting on the trial of a fertility clinic worker, drunk on the late shift, who dropped a tray of fertilized embryos, killing them horribly. Imagine the funerals (gotta have funerals if they've been murdered). Imagine the offender's family, explaining that he feels terribly remorseful and realizes how much harm he's done to the lives of his victims, who will never again have the privelege of being selected for implantation, or kept frozen in meditative limbo, waiting for his or her turn at freedom.

Also, do identical twins share a soul?