Very well put and pretty much the same reasons why I am against the death penalty. We will never have a perfect justice system and as long as we don't I would rather have some safeguards that innocent people will not be executed.
Please note my stipulation: Capital punishment should be exacted only when there is a no doubt decision. When that is the case, justice should be swift and sure.
I am 100 % opposed to it. Sometimes when a crime is especially outrageous, my gut reaction is that those who did it deserve to die, but that feeling dies down. I pretty much agree with DonnyMost and StupidMoniker on this, but even more with that:
Again I ask: Is caging someone in an 8 x 8 cell without hope year after year not more barbarous and cruel? I still think the "Devil's Island" solution is the best compromise.
It can be corrected, not for the years in the past, but for the future (and it has happened...sometimes evidence comes up after years). The death penalty cannot.
Why does it have to be considered torture? I'm in the camp where removal from society should be enough. Tiny cells, solitary confinement, horrid prison conditions just seem excessive and barbaric imo. Of course, you can tell what my position regarding the death penalty is at.
They are two completely different questions with completely different rationales governing the decisions on whether to be "for" or against each one. It is not hypocritical to be for the death penalty and against abortion, and it's not hypocritical to be against the death penalty but in favor of allowing people to have abortions. (Maybe certain individuals might have hypocritical stances and certain political slogans might be hypocritical.) The best arguments for and against the two issues are not contradictory.
Sorry, I just don't see how killing babies can be right. I am on the fence as far as the death penalty goes but ANYONE who is against the death penalty yet supports the killing of innocent babies is about as much of a hypocrite as one can possibly be!!!!!!
Show me one person who thinks that killing babies is ok. The pro-choice argument isn't that it is ok to kill babies. The argument is that they're not babies. It's easy to see hypocrisy in strawmen. But if you actually pay attention to the real arguments being made, the hypocrisy dissappears.
To cut to the point most of those who are pro-choice don't believe that an embryo or a fetus is a baby.
Well the fact that a "fetus" does have a beating heart and the fact that babies can be born almost 5 months premature and still survive albeit with help shows that a fetus is a baby. The irony of the pro-choice crowd is that they are inferring that the "fetus" does not have a soul and is rather more like a tumor or something they don't want in their body all the while they are more than likely not religious people so the concept of having a soul should be moot for them. I see a lot of hypocrisy in this.
You just changed the subject. Besides, this is a death penalty thread. Based on the explanations we gave, do you now agree that there is no hypocrisy in the general positions of being pro-choice and anti-death penalty (or vice versa)? If not, can you go back to that question and explain how they are related and where the hypocrisy is?
It's only hypocrisy in your mind because you're too ignorant to understand the difference between the state being empowered to execute people as vengeance for victims and the right of a woman to control her own body. The actual ironies involved here are the conservative indiference to the unjust application of the death penalty and the danger of putting innocent people to death as well as the conservative indiference to the well being of children that are not aborted and are born to difficult circumstances.
