Dear xzins,
Yes, you couldn’t kill HIM or HER, if our interpretation were the accepted one.
But it’s not.
sitetest
It’s just common sense, sitetest, that a pro-life supporter would understand what we’re discussing. It’s a person, so you can’t kill it without due process.
(I’m of the opinion that referring to a child as an “it” comes to us out of the German language in which the articles der/die/das are masculine/feminine/neuther. The gender of a child is neuter, so the correct nominative is “Das Kind”.
So is Madchen, girl, Das Madchen, and it still baffles me. (there’s probably a keystroke html for an umlaut, but I don’t know it.)