Pro-Life and Pro-Death sentence, is this really a double standard?

Question

This was brought up as an answer to another question that talked about double standards. And I felt it would be a great question.

I'm going to wait to state my opinion on this topic, since I do not want to influence anyones answers. Please think hard about this when you reply and please try hard not to attack one another.

Thanks for the great answers.

For me this isn't a double standard. An unborn child is an innocent life, which deserves a chance to live.

As for people on Death Row? These people were found guilty of heinous crimes. And I personally hate that my tax dollars are spent supporting them while they basicly sit around doing nothing. I have struggled with a good solotion to this issue and I know that Death Sentences are put in place to try and help people stop and think before they commit terrible crimes.

But psychopaths and sociopaths minds don't work like a regular human mind.

And sometimes (Like in Jeffrey Dahmers' case) the prison population decides this or that person is even too evil for them to want to live with.

Sadly there'll always be people society will never be able to reach out to and change into a good human being. Because the evil in them runs too deep.

Do we support these people with our taxes? Or do we save our tax dollars for people we can help?

Answer 1

I have never met anyone who opposes killing human beings in every single instance. Self-defense, for one!

So we weigh the interest in human life against other values and concerns we have. We kill in wars, we have the death penalty, and we have abortion. Some justify one or more of these by pointing to the other values we uphold by allowing the killing. For instance, ridding a society of a bad person, or a woman having control over her body. We each make up our own minds.

We all draw lines. Even if we disagree on the issues, we are all applying the same test.

And we all favor SOME killing. You can dress it up in semantics, but it's true.

Answer 2

I don't understand why this is so incomprehensible to people.

A unborn child has done nothing wrong. It did not ask to be brought into this world and it does not deserve to pay for some people mistake that an idiot caused.

Violent criminals on the other hand, choose to take someones life in the most violent manner imaginable. They know what they are doing and should pay the consequences for their actions.

How are those two even comparable?

PS..there are a few instances where I think abortion may be the best. If there is danger to the mother and the child, or if that child is going to live it's life in hell by abuse from a mother/father who didn't want it and don't have enough sense to give it up for adoption.

Answer 3

I believe that abortion should be legal...but I wish it were a lot rarer than it is.
The people who are pro-life (or, anti-abortion, to avoid euphemisms) believe that a fetus is an innocent life, and that abortion kills it...usually for no other reason than for the convenience of a woman who was too lazy to either use some form of birth control herself, or require her partner to. Pro-lifers think it is a horrible crime to destroy an innocent life just as "uh oh" retroactive birth control.
The death sentence is usually only given and applied to the most heinous criminals who have taken innocent lives themselves...often in very brutal, horrifying ways. I personally think that some people DESERVE to die for their actions. It may or may not deter crime...but once applied, it guarantees THAT particular criminal will never again hurt anyone else.
I would like to think that decent, reasonable people can agree or disagree with either position. But I don't think it's a double-standard to value an innocent life more than the life of a vicious murderer.

Answer 4

If you are pro life, you cannot draw distinctions, all human life is equal. When you start drawing distinctions as to what and who is worthy of living you start to fuel the pro-choice argument.

To be pro-death penalty and pro life is a hypocrisy. Plain and simple, you either say that everybody is Worthy of life, or it is humanities decision to decide. The two are not mutually exclusive. You will hear a lot about how abortion in an innocent child. You could also look at there are those that are executed that are the result of tremendous abuse, neglect, poverty, addiction and a host of other reasons that drove them into the life of crime. I am not diminishing the responsibly they must take for the crime, yet stating that there are circumstances for everything.

To put things in their simplest forms, you can either believe that every life is worth living regardless of the reprehensible mistakes of the past, or the lack of future they may face. Or you can believe that it is our choice to decide what life is worth hagging onto.

This argument is not about the action rather the value of life. I am seeing a lot of what did the fetus do? It doesn't matter. When you say one life sparing while others aren't you are creating an imbalance. You cannot honestly say you are pro life if you believe that some should die.

Answer 5

No, but then again I wonder how these two different topics get linked together? If people want to link them, then OK, I'll play. It is the value of life. In my world, a unborn fetus, even if you argue it is not alive, has more potential than a murderer that doesn't regard life as precious.

Where the double standard is people that are pro-abortion, yes pro-abortion not choice, and anti-death sentence. They value a murderer over a fetus. It is that simple.

Answer 6

Easy to see. Is it OK to kill innocent babies, and not to put to death rapists and killers. If you can't see something that plain, then no answer in the world is going to help you.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm still unsure about the death penalty. I'm a Christian and the Bible says, " the wrath of man do'ith not the righteousness of God" so I would tend to be more in favor of life without parole in some rathole of a prison somewhere. But abortion I do believe is wrong and if people don't want children they shouldn't produce them. If they are too stupid to keep themselves from producing unwanted children then they should probably be locked up somewhere too. Anybody that dumb is a danger to themselves and others.

Answer 7

of direction somebody had to deliver abortion into this. Being professional existence and professional dying penalty are 2 various issues. a baby in the womb is helpless, defenseless and harmless. i'm against abortion apart from rape or incest, or if the wellbeing of the mum is in risk. yet against it for all different situations. Killers are generally adults that knew precisely what they have been doing and could pay the terrific cost. yet i'm for the dying penalty because of the business enterprise factor of it. Too undesirable it takes years, and years to kill somebody. If it have been extra fast, the dying penalty would make experience, why would desire to we foot the 60k a 300 and sixty 5 days invoice for two decades to maintain trash alive? that's funds that doesn't visit the babies, to our roads, to our hospitals, to housing, to each thing. so which you asked "would you do it" On a jury, sure i ought to convict. If I had to do it with my own hand? sure, if the case replaced into sparkling, and ther replaced into little question that the guy ended yet another existence, i'd pull the set off, or hit the change or inject the poison. Too a lot of human beings are vulnerable, vulnerable minded, gentle and without guts. it particularly is why the rustic (too many countries) are being run into the floor through criminals, and run through criminals, human beings don't have the tummy to do what's important to take out the trash.

Answer 8

There's an element of innocence involved in here but the real answer isn't about whether the criminal or the fetus asked for it but whether life is sacred. If all life is sacred, no death penalty. This is assuming life begins at conception and all that.
There are lots of questions there, a criminal knowlingly committing a crime that carries a death penalty, could be flirting with the idea that he asked for the death penalty. Does any person ask to be born, to be alive? Why not have abortion under that rational. I never thought of that.

Answer 9

It is not a double standard, although I am pro-life and anti-death penalty.

The fact is, a convict must face a punishment. I disagree with the death penalty as that punishment, but a child is not comparable to Ted Bundy. But the law of some states is the death penalty, and so it is enforced.

Answer 10

it is not a double standard at all. It is really pro Innocent life, or protecting the Innocent. Executing a murderer prevents more loss of life in the future at the hands of the murderer. If someone has life in prison they can still mastermind murders.