Is there really a “peculiar” connection of these issues? I only see a possible inconsistency in someone saying “I oppose aborting because all life is precious”, while being pro capital punishment, or “I oppose capital punishment because all life is precious” while being pro choice. It’s only because of the sappy feelgoodery of “all life is precious” that the issues are tentatively linked.
I have no problem with the abortion of undifferentiated clusters of cells, and I have no problem with the abortion of fetuses. I do believe there comes a point where the woman in question should just cool it and have the baby, most notably in the last trimester, but that’s me.
I believe that there are people whose actions and demonstrated intentions and inclinations demand their death.
And I believe that I have on occasion been wrong, and that it is important to think things through before jamming my big important thoughts down your throat.
And I believe that abortions are going to happen, regardless of what laws are put in place. If they can happen in Tehran, of all places, they can happen anywhere. The only difference is whether they happen with terror, pain, or death, or whether they happen in relative safety.
In fact, one of the most common arguments I’ve seen for capital punishment is that human life is so precious that anyone who destroys it (i.e. commits murder) deserves to pay the ultimate penalty.
And if you’re going to talk about all life (not just human life) being precious, you could point out similar “inconsistencies” involving pro-choice vegetarians and pro-life meat-eaters.
What I’m saying is that everyone agrees that a delivered baby is fully human and no one believes a fertilized egg cell is fully human. The question is where does the fetus go from not fully human to fully human.
I personally would put that around 6 weeks when the first brain waves are detectable. However I fully realize that this could be wrong and it could have happened earlier. Maybe it happens at 4 weeks. If I feel that there is 99% chance I am right about it not being fully human at 4 weeks, that means I think there is a 1% chance it is fully human. That is where the probabilities come in. The first question is “when does life begin” and the second question is “how sure are you about your first answer”. Both are relevant to the abortion question. That is why I am fine with things like the IUD that prevent implantation but not abortion past 3-4 weeks.
I suspect the theory about the death penalty removing violent individuals from the gene pool is probably true, but you could remove them equally well from the gene pool by incarcerating them. Relatively few women are going to want to have a baby with an incarcerated man wh can’t contribute to the upkeep of the baby.
Beyond that, preventing violent people from reproducing sounds a bit too much like punishing children for the sins of their parents, for me to be entirely comfortable. If it comes down to addressing the biochemical factors that predispose one to violence, I’d rather deal with that through pharmacological than through eugenic methods.
The most in-depth psychometric studies I saw (they’re a bit old now) seem to indicate in depends rather strongly on what sort of pro-lifer you’re talking about. People who are extremely anti-abortion tend to be more opposed to capital punishment than people who support abortion rights, but people who are moderately anti-abortion tend to favour capital punishment. I’ll try to find the cites.
It’s the same argument that capital punishment is wrong because there is a chance that one or more of the executed might be innocent.
FWIW it isn’t hypocritical to support the death penalty and oppose abortion any more than vice versa. The justification is different in each case.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m closest to (3) but I dispute the “supports abortion” wording. I think abortion is a bad thing, it should be a last resort, not a first, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in most circumstances. However, I recognize that it isn’t my decision to make, and that sometimes it is the best of several shitty options, and should therefore stay legal and available. A difficult and necessary decision shouldn’t be made more difficult by driving it underground into a black market. I’m solidly pro-choice. But not pro-abortion.
I don’t support government execution. The convicts may indeed deserve to die, but I don’t want the government that ostensibly represents me to carry out that killing in my name. I’m not a pacifist, but in almost all modern cases I’m against war, drone strikes, etc. That’s even presuming they’re guilty, which is questionable at best in a lot of cases. I think self-defense is basically the only time killing a human is justified. Executing prisoners is the definition of unwarranted killing, in my opinion. They are chained and caged. Maybe they’re a threat on the streets, but you’ve neutralized that threat already by caging them and chaining them.
(1). I support both abortion and capital punishment.
(2). I oppose both abortion and capital punishment.
(3). I support abortion, but oppose capital punishment.
(4). I oppose abortion, but support capital punishment.
(5). Neither/Other answer.
I reject your premise.
Capital punishment and abortion are indeed both situations in which (some, not all) people perceive an exception to the general rule that it is wrong to kill and constitutes murder if you do, but they aren’t the only ones and there’s no reason to tie those two together.
War (military conflict) is another situation in which killing people is generally not perceived as murder. There are cases where soldiers killing during wartime is perceived as murder, but for most people that’s not the default.
And given those three, you can probably come up with some others. My point being that there’s no built-in reason that either prochoice folk or prolife folk would arrive at the same conclusion with regards to capital punishment that they did with regards to abortion. There are similarities (both involve ending life on purpose) but there are differences and the latter is sufficient to discard any claims (by either side or anyone else for that matter) of hypocrisy or inconsistency.
For the record, I am fervently prochoice on abortion (it should always be legal and unrestricted); I think there may be individual situations where abortion is murder, but I think the best judge of that is the pregnant person; society is best off when we leave her the person in charge of that evaluation.
I am cautiously “not against” capital punishment but it has been implemented unfairly and unequally and has furthermore been a giant clusterfuck, implementation-wise. I’m also annoyed and provoked that capital punishment gets 99% of the attention when we, as a culture, discuss cruel punishment, when imprisonment is, to my thinking, a much larger problem. We lock massive numbers of people in cages for long periods and that’s OK, just don’t be taking that tiny handful and executing them, that’s evil and bad?? I’m no fan of criminal justice system / penal system etc operations overall, but I’m not convinced that capital punishment cannot be fair and merciful, I’m just not impressed with the implementation I’ve seen.
I question war and consider it every person (and every soldier’s) responsibility to consider that the most moral thing they ever do might be to disobey orders and/or refrain from engaging in warfare. Be that as it may, I, like most people, would never consider participation in a war as a solider (and hence killing enemy soldiers) to constitute murder.
Don’t try to oversimplify the abortion argument. The loud people on both sides have already reduced the discourse to the “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad” level.
I oppose capital punishment because it’s irreversible and I don’t place that much trust in the courts.
I support abortion because a fetus is not a person. There’s no bright line where “personhood” occurs, but a reasonable compromise is:
- First trimester – At will.
- Second trimester – With a doctor’s recommendation.
- Third trimester – Life or death for the mother.
I agree to a large extent-the articles I’ve read credited prisons as well as the death penalty for this decline in violence. Additionally, of course, it must be kept in mind this occurred in less civilized times when such stern measures were necessary to stem the tide of crime.
Not everyone agrees that a fertilized egg is not a human. I don’t believe that, but I have had my share of screaming matches with people that do, and will not stop until they have converted the infidel to the One True Way.
And I seem to remember an experiment in which it was proven that JELLO has brainwaves, at least on an EEG. If this alone is proof of humanity, I’m in deep doodoo.
How about a new jingle?
J-E-L-L… O fuck, I just ate a person!
Exactly right. We’ve had such views presented right on this board.
You can put it wherever you like. But it’s a subjective personal view and you’re not entitled to make that judgment for anyone else who may have a different opinion. If there was a clear-cut answer medical science and medical ethicists would have given it to us.
Regardless of what your subjective views are, there is a need for objectivity in the context of law and it would seem to me in the context of common sense there isn’t much different between a fetus in the mother’s womb at nine months and the newborn baby out of it in terms of development.
(4). I oppose abortion, but support capital punishment.
But really, it’s case by case.
I don’t oppose every abortion, but I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that a fetus is not a person. And I don’t particularly care to argue when it becomes a person, just that I’m generally not OK with killing it out of convenience. I don’t judge anyone whose opinion differs from mine because I get where you’re coming from. I just don’t agree.
As for capital punishment, I agree with those who point out that it is terribly inefficient in its current form in the U.S. It is not a good solution as it exists now. But as a philosophy, I’m OK with putting the worst of the worst offenders of society to death.
A fertilized ovum is unambiguously 100% human. But that’s irrelevant, because being human doesn’t mean anything. An excised cancerous tumor is also unambiguously 100% human, and so far as I know nobody has any qualms with dropping that into an incinerator. Questions about whether a fetus is human distract attention away from the much more important (and also, unfortunately, much more difficult) question of whether a fetus is a person.
And if someone does start a poll on this, please include more than four options. A very large segment of the population believes that abortion should be permitted under some circumstances but prohibited under others (just what those circumstances are vary from person to person), and such a person cannot be well-categorized under either “I support abortion” nor “I oppose abortion”.
The law can draw arbitrary lines but that doesn’t make it any more “objective” than someone’s opinion. And I would dispute that there’s a need for it since, for example, in Canada there is no law against abortion at any term, ever since it was overturned by the Supreme Court. The world hasn’t ended and society hasn’t fallen apart, so clearly there’s no imperative “need”. In terms of common sense and fetus viability, this is where medical ethics comes into play. It would be difficult to find a doctor willing to do an abortion in the third trimester, especially late in the trimester, but the fact that it’s not illegal gives the medical practitioner leeway to exercise judgment in special cases, instead of the law not only trying to second-guess medical science on “when human life begins” but also predetermining medical judgments in all circumstances.
I’d say that a fertilized egg is a human person in the morally relevant sense.
Which is also tangential rather than ultimately decisive for some of us, which makes it annoying that these debates keep circling that particular drain as well.
Easy concession so we can move forward: yonder embryo is alive, is human, is a person, and the act of abortion is indeed killing that life.
I’m still prochoice. Not all killing is murder. We perceive situations in which humans may find it necessary to kill other humans without designating it “murder”.
Abortion is a special, unique situation and one in which it strikes me as entirely reasonable to utilize that kind of consideration. Put the pregnant person in charge of the evaluation; she’s got the most invested in every aspect of the situation.