Time and again I have read debates about abortion and/or the death penalty, both here and abroad. I often hear the assertion that proponents of the first are often opponents of the second. I’ll accept that assertion as fact. I then hear the argument that one cannot reasonably defend the killing of innocent babies and then turn around and be horrified by the humane elimination of monsters that have proven themselves to be unfit to live in society. Usually an accusation of hypocrasy is leveled at this point.
If you believe in a woman’s right to choose, but oppose state-sanctioned murder, how do you morally reconcile these two seeming contradictory views?
Addendum one: If you have come in here to support the more “conservative” points of view, or wish to argue one side or the other of only one of these issues, please take it to another thread. I understand that both issues have generated at least two previous threads each since Autumn of 1973. This thread is targeted to the holders of both positions named above. Thank you for your support.
Addendum two: The bleebing heart positions described above are ones that I, as a bleebing heart commie baby killer, subscribe to. But when I face such a question, I often go into “dear in headlights” mode. I honestly don’t have a good answer for this.
As a holder of both positions (and note that neither issue is even debated anymore in most of the industrialised democratic world outside the US), I contend that a criminal is a human being but a foetus is not.
I see the contradiction there as well, and rarely hesitate to bring it up in debate. But comparing the two contradictions, I could see where the latter could make more sense, at least in the context of sound bites.
And I would thank you, had you actually helped at all. Please explain why abortion and the death penalty are nothing alike. There are many people that would argue that abortion is murder and the death penalty is justice. Do you agree with that? Why not? Please try to answer without condesceding snippiness.
Oh, and I’m not confused. I’m just at a loss for words when it comes to coherant counter-arguments.
So what you’re saying is…you want to open up a Great Debates thread, but not have a Great Debate.
Nor even a Pretty Good Debate.
Nor even Anything Resembling a Debate Whatsoever.
What you want, apparantly, is for like minded bleebing hearts to spoon feed you facts, figures and rhetorical zingers so you can go somewhere else and score points in somebody else’s Great Debate.
I think your little addendums are pretty silly, obviously, and not in keeping with the spirit of the forum. I think you’ll get a lot more out of this if you disavow them. Just my opinion.
I support a woman’s right to make decisions concerning her own body, rather than the state making those decisions for her, just as much as I support a man’s right to live, without the state choosing for him.
What’s the problem? Both are human rights issues.
Countries that still have the death penalty are considered barbaric. Countries that do not allow women to have abortions are considered barbaric. You know, what SentientMeat said.
That’s a nice concise answer, although my Devil’s advocate answer would be
a) A fetus is so a human being (and so continues a Very Stale debate)
b) The criminal gave up all rights to being part of the human race
Once again, I don’t agree with either statement above, but I see a sorta kinda internal consistancy with it. More so than with the opposite position.
I think the problem in explaining our shared opinion is that it cannot be explained in a mere sentence or two. I could certainly justify myself, but would need many many paragraphs to do so. It’s like trying to defend onesself against a Moon hoaxer’s challenge of “How did they survive the van Allen belts?” with a quick and snappy answer that the general public could understand immediately.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I am also pro choice.
My reason for opposing the death penalty is simple: I do not trust our system enough to feel confident that those who are condemned are actually guilty.
I support choice because I believe that no one should be enslaved, and that forcing a woman to bring a pregnancy to term is a form of enslavement–using her body against her will.
I guess I really don’t see the two as very similar at all.
Allow to to explain further, then. I am trying to start a debate, but I wish it to be on the subject of the inherent contradiction, and don’t want it to devolve into only one of the controversial subjects to the exclusion of the other. We have enough of those types of debates already.
And I’m not excluding anyone from this thread. All comers are welcome. But I would like it stay on topic, and that may not be easy.
Actually, they are pretty similar, in the way you described. One has to do with incompetent bureaucrats lording life and death decisions over us, while the other is about incompetent bureaucrats lording life and death decisions over us. These are very close to my reasons for believing the way I do.
Well, they are only agreeably alike in that both procedures stop something from consuming resources. That is not enough of a tie to require the exact same moral judgment about both. Simple enough?
The test for hypocracy would be that you personally decide that they are both murder yet should have different legal status. I’m sure you’ll find that’s not a common stance.
I totally agree with you that they are not very similar at all.
Although I am opposite of you( since I think that abortion is murder, murder deserves the death penalty, the death penalty is state/bible sanctioned justice, therefore people who commit or assist in abortion should be executed) there is no contradiction.
So I dont see why anyone would be confused, or try to think that abortion and execution are the same things.
I’m pro-choice, which means I believe in a woman’s right to decide if she want’s to have an abortion or not. That doesn’t mean that I dance around at clinics shouting “Yippee, another one bites the dust!” I don’t believe that any woman thinks having an abortion is “fun” or “no big deal.”
I’m anti-death penalty because, as jsgoddesssaid, I don’t trust our system. There have been so many cases lately where people on death row were exonerated that it casts considerable doubt on that form of punishment.
I also don’t see it as an effective punishment. I suppose that if I believed in heaven and hell it might seem that executing a criminal would be tantamount to putting that person in “god’s hands,” but I don’t believe that. Pratchett said it best when he said that a loser has to know s/he has lost. A prisoner has to be alive to be imprisoned.
And if jsgoddess’ opinion squares so well why the heck don’t you say that instead of being a “dear in the headlights” (spelled like that I think of a nice old Englishwoman in the headlights )
It took me about 20 seconds to say hers out loud, less for mine (but of course I was being snarky).
something happened when i tried to post this last time… hope i’m not just duplicating…
I read her death penalty statement as referring not to the bureaucrats, but the court/jury system. I dunno if I have more faith in a bureaucrat’s proclamation than that of collection of 12 “random” citizens, but I don’t think either is consistent or knowledgable enough to decide matters of life and death (or whether life or death has even occured, in the case of abortion)
I think my beliefs pretty much echo yours. Here is my position, boiled down to as few words as I can manage:
I am in favor of of a woman’s choice, because that is between her and her husband and her doctor and her god. Lawgivers cannot possibly see all ends, and cannot anticipate all possible situations. A one-size-fits-all law won’t work.
I am against the death penalty because the machinery of the court systems often makes mistakes, and the DP makes mistakes irreversible. As well, the DP does nothing to correct any of society’s ills.
About the only common thing I see between the two is a general mistrust of people making decisions affecting other peoples’ lives. So I guess I agree that the two have little in common.
The important aspect of the debate you are overlooking here is that pro-lifers would say that it’s not just about choice, but about a life hanging in the balance. They see (hope i’m not overstepping here) an embryo/fetus of any age as a human life that must be afforded the protections of any other [perhaps non-capital offending] human. When you try and weigh a woman’s choice versus a “baby”'s life, it really gets down to apples and oranges, imo.
Personally, I don’t see a fertilized egg as any more “human” than my appendix, and don’t have a problem with “terminating” either. However, I also don’t see an 8.9 month old fetus as any less human or worthy of protection than a newborn infant. The rest is shades of gray and it seems difficult if not impossible to determine at what point in gestation the fetus “deserves” to live.
Given this predicament, I’m not sure that I find the enslavement argument convincing… That is, infringing on a woman’s freedom to do what she wishes with her body is fair to a certain point, but after that there should be concerns for the fetus that are essentially equal to concerns you might have for a newborn. That is, at some point the choice to terminate becomes comparable to killing an infant: something everybody berates when it regrettably occurs.
When did I say (or imply) that I was overlooking it as part of this debate? Or do you mean as part of the abortion debate? In the bit you quoted, I was just expressing my personal view. I left out whether a fetus is a human life, but that was in the interest of brevity.
But in the global abortion debate? It’s pretty obvious that the personhood of a fetus is central to the whole thing. And this is where (stereotypical) conservatives get to call (stereotypical) liberals hypocrites. If – to you – a fetus is a fully functioning human complete with social security number and downpayment on a house, then you would likely want to compare that fetus to any living adult. If you were to compare such a person to a violent criminal, then to see the criminal as more worthy of death would not be inconsistent.
So to argue with this view, is it necessary to insist that a fetus is not a person? Could you defend your views on any other basis?
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