Could you define “evil”?
I agree 100% with the first statement.
And I agree, in theory, with the second. But the theory is far from reality.
I also agree that some people deserve to die. The problem is in determining who deserves to die, and who doesn’t. We are not infallible; mistakes can be - and are - made. Even if this were a rare occurrence (it’s not), the possibility of executing an innocent person outweighs every other consideration.
And it should never be up to any government, to decide who deserves to die. Governments should not be in the business of executing its citizens.
This, although I’d make exceptions to both. (I believe in executing traitors and other political criminals, as well as in allowing abortion when there are serious threats to the mother’s health). As you say, though, I’m much more strongly opposed to abortion than to the death penalty.
The OP assumes that pro-lifers oppose abortion but favour capital punishment.
How often is that actually the case?
For instance, the Roman Catholic Church, one of the strongest opponents of abortion, is also opposed to capital punishment, except in very exceptional circumstances, as summarised in the wiki article, Catholic Church and capital punishment:
Can you clarify the part I bolded? What do you mean by “person”? and how do you decide when one person’s rights are more important than another person’s rights?
I’d say when one “person’s” existence is completely dependent on the life of the other person, the latter person’s rights would trump the former’s.
In the US, it’s the norm. Capital punishment enjoys broad support, but the groups that support it the most are, by and large, also the groups that favor the most restrictions on abortion.
Case by case basis. We’ve tried, in any number of debates, to come up with an analogy to abortion – the life-support analogy, the “intruder in the house” analogy, etc. – and none of them is really comparable. There simply isn’t anything like it. So you have to make up your own mind.
(That, in my opinion, is a big reason to favor pro-choice. Everyone can make up their own mind.)
As for person, I won’t go to the effort of defining the term rigorously; that would just invite some cynic to throw a plucked chicken over my wall. You and I are persons; a fetus isn’t. A newborn baby is. For legal purposes, birth is the dividing line.
(I’m okay with the Roe v. Wade concept of gradual increase in the state’s interest in the fetus. Early abortions should have no limitations whatever; later abortions may be regulated more. It’s a compromise, and a good one – so long as the opposition respects it and doesn’t play chickenshit games with “admitting rights to hospitals” and other burdensome obstacles.)
I support safe, legal, and accessible abortion, and I oppose capital punishment.
Among the reasons (there are many) that I oppose CP is that it punishes the family of the criminal, who must mourn his loss, and have no choice in the matter.
Abortion is the choice of the pregnant woman, and if she’s continuing in a relationship with the father, I hope it’s a choice of the couple. I’m sure it’s nopt a happy choice, but nonetheless it’s their choice.
OP: why not post a poll in another forum, and provide a link to this thread?
Option 4, borderline 3.
I was once an enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty, insisting upon its application for practically all murderers. However, soon enough learning about certain facts of the death penalty made me swing towards an abolitionist stance. Currently I have once again come to support the death penalty (reinforcing this was the intriguing theory I discovered last week that murder rates declined in the last several centuries because of the death penalty removing the most violent individuals from the gene pool) but with severe reservations. Theoretically I have no problem with it-I find the entire argument that the State executing a murderer is morally equivalent to the murderer’s actions incomprehensible for it supposes that all violence is equal which is not the case, but I believe that the pragmatic case against it is strong. The three primary factors in this regard are obviously the great costs of carrying out a death sentence, unequal issue of the death penalty depending on race or class, and the risk of executing an innocent man. For these reasons I would gladly support a clean abolition of the death penalty over the status quo in the United States. However, I believe that were the death penalty restricted to only a small class of the worst murderers (terrorists, spree killers, serial killers, mob bosses), it could be carried out much more swiftly and at lower cost without a risk of executing an innocent. Such executions would be strongly symbolic in nature and designed towards displaying the supreme power of the State against those engaging in antisocial behaviour. In this regard, I would suppose my “ideal” death penalty regime is probably that of Japan’s which usually does executions more switftly than America by restricting it to only a small class of the worst fiends. Of course, in this regard we should reject one of the worst legacies of the Anglo-American unitarian tendency [1] towards euphemisms and making everything clean and sterile as possible regardless of other factors by using either the guillotine or firing squad instead of lethal injection as the method of execution.
As most of you know, I am a staunch pro-lifer and oppose all abortions except those carried out to preserve the life of the mother and/or in cases of ectopic pregnancy. At the very least however we should adopt German or French laws at abortion which cap it at 12 weeks or so since viability is increasingly pushed back thanks to the advance of medical science. Of course, those who practice abortion after the point of viability should be treated like any other murders and thus serial abortionists after the point of viability will be subject to the conditions of the death penalty I outlined above.
[1] Used in place of the sense of “puritanical” since it was the Unitarians and other liberal Protestants of the 19th Century who actually pushed for such moralistic legislation as Prohibition and the like
^Should read “borderline 2”
I fall approximately into the camps of pro-abortion but anti judicial killing. Although I respect the arguments usually wheeled out by both sides in both cases, I am surprised that little exercise is given to my prime philosophical issue in each case- that of pragmatic response. We use such arguments when considering other killings- self defence, just war, medical termination of life, assisted suicide.
Any death is dreadful and should be avoided where it is pragmatic to do so. This leads me to insist on a high standard both for use of deadly force by governments and individuals and limits on methods used in all cases. The question is, what empirical evidence exists that the advantages of such a death have over other possible actions.
If judicial killing could be shown as reliably and consistently effective in reducing murders and other negative actions, I could be persuaded that it was a defensible decision. If a ban on abortion could be shown to reduce the deaths and distress caused by the commonality of hidden abortions in all societies, and also in some manner make the process easier ( for instance the thought experiment proposed that advances in science would allow gestation to term outside the womb) then I could consider banning abortions as defensible.
These are the tests that we apply to self defence, just war and medical termination of life. Why do we rarely hear of the argument in other cases?
I oppose both abortion and capital punishment.
I oppose abortion, but will accept a compromise to legalize during the 1st trimester. Execution is fine, although it should be kept to extreme cases where the evidence is likewise extremely firm. Like the Nazis which were hanged after WW-II. if Bin Laden had been captured alive. If the head chopping British ISIS guy is caught alive. etc.
I think it’s very difficult to define a person in this case. I read a short (anti-abortion) story where a person was defined as being able to do higher math, so abortion was allowed through until middle school.
So, I don’t really want to go down that path. I don’t consider a fetus a person. But, if I did, under whatever definition, I consider the rights of the mother, a living, breathing person, with relationships, loved ones, memories, etc, to be far, far more important.
Once the fetus is born, then I support laws that allow the mother to give up the child with no consequences. While the fetus is still in utero, though, it is dependent, and can only be kept alive, by that one person. Once it’s out, any responsible adult can care for it.
So, I guess I’m saying that I don’t consider it a person, but even if you were to convince me that it was, it wouldn’t change my stance on abortion rights.
- I used to be a 2 but the death penalty is one issue I changed my mind about after reading some arguments for it. Some crimes are just so horrific that only execution is a fitting punishment. If I had my way it would be restricted to multiple murders or murders that involve torture, kidnapping or sexual assault.
An abortion, no one really knows and it may be impossible to actually know when a fetus becomes a baby worth protecting, so protecting it too early is better than too late. A good thought experiment I read about is someone fills a hundred paper bags with ninety nine dolls and one baby. If you pick a bag at random would it be okay to have it thrown in an incinerator?
I never found the woman’s right to her body argument the least bit convincing. It is all about balancing rights, the baby versus the mother. A baby will have a lifespan of 70 - 90 years that is all being taken away, having to be pregnant for eight months does not compare with a baby being killed.
Supportfor the death penalty people with anti-abortion views is 69% and is practically the same among the public at large 66%.
I don’t understand how that thought experiment is in any way relevant to the abortion discussion. Are you saying that there’s a, say, one percent chance that fetuses are people, and so we have to ban abortion in case fetuses end up being people? If so, I don’t see how whether fetuses are people is somehow a probabilistic question.
Regarding your last point, I agree that once it’s a baby, you have to balance its rights vs. those of the mother. The abortion argument is about what to do with a fetus before it’s a baby.
(2). I oppose both abortion and capital punishment