Okay, I know that I normally don't post in this forum, but my boss and me were talking about this subject the other day. Let's say someone is in favor of abortion. However, this same person is strongly against the death penalty. To a naivte like myself, that would seem like a paradox or contradiction. I, for the record, am for the death penalty and against abortion. Now I am thinking, as this is a question for the politics people out there, what is the likelihood that someone is: (1) for death penalty and against abortion? (2) for death penalty and for abortion? (3) against death penalty and against abortion? (4) against death penalty and for abortion? (my original paradox) Hmm...maybe I will do a poll on this...
Hey Manny, Why is it a paradox? They are two completely different issues and have no relevance to each other.
Well mc mark, I guess it gets more into your views on abortion. A lot of people, including myself, feel that aborting a fetus is akin to murder. And there are others that argue that a fetus is not the same thing as a person but I guess that is essentially one of the big arguments on abortion. However, I don't normally get involved into these discussions, so you will have to bear with me. Now, if you feel that aborting a fetus is murder, then why would you be against the death penalty? I can see being against it if you feel that it is not society's role to decide when a person should die, but to me it sounds like a contradiction. Now granted, there are exceptions to the rule...if the mother's life is in jeopardy, then abortion is the only way to go if it is going to save the mother's life, but other than that isolated case (and how many times does that situation happen), that is the only time I would favor it. Contrast that to monsters like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc..., why would anyone want those monsters to keep on living but say no to the life of a newborn? That is something that is really hard for me to understand. Hopefully, people here can help me understand why someone would be for abortion but against the death penalty better.
I am against the death penalty for the obvious reasons. I am not for abortion. I don't think too many people are. But I am in favor of keeping abortions legal. That is the difference. The law is not our savior on this one. It would not solve the problem. It would be too much of a mess to enforce. I don't want to see underground "abortion houses" existing, and being raided and crap like that. The abortion pill would become in high demand and a part of the unwinable war on drugs. I also don't want to see women who need help and compassion become convicted of murder.
All good points manny. And I must say it took some time for self-reflection. I guess it comes down to “who am I to judge”. I have no right to say what someone else does with his or her body. By the same token, could you throw the switch or inject someone knowing they were going to die (and might be innocent)? I couldn’t; and I’m not saying that that makes me morally superior. I’m just saying that I couldn’t do it. I would rather have someone rot in jail for the rest of his or her lives than make a mistake and kill someone who might be innocent.
Fair enough and I respect your views on this, mc mark. However, one thing I want to ask you and this is really for all those against the death penalty: I understand when there is reasonable doubt to the person's innocence in having them executed, but what about those that there is no doubt like Gacy, Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh? Do you still think that a person like McVeigh should live for the rest of his life in prison? I know that there is the argument of "well who made us God to judge someone's life and then end it", but if you are still against the death penalty, do a google search on Richard Speck. He killed like 8 nurses in Chicago in 1965 (I think or it might have been 1966) and was spared the death penalty. Before he died in prison of cancer (I think), he made a video of how "he lived his life" in prison. It involved homosexual acts and him bragging about how "good" his life is now compared to what it was before prison. He even went so far as to thank the people against the death penalty for giving him such a "good life". But it is like anything else, there are always going to be gray areas. Just like in the case of the mother's life in jeopardy for abortion, I don't see how someone can get the death penalty for committing one murder when there was some reasonable doubt that they did it compared to someone who committed 33 murders and there was no reasonable doubt that they did it. MEOWGI, I see where you are coming from with the underground stuff, but don't you think that this could be "reasonably controlled"? I compare it to gun control. In England, there used to be gun control (I have to admit that I don't know if this is true now or not). I would be curious to know how much "underground" (not putting that in quotes to be sarcastic, just putting it in quotes for a general description of illegal) buying of guns were going on in England during that time. Was it so rampant that it caused them to end gun control? I don't know the answer, so maybe someone here does.
Manny - I'm a little confused here. You keep referencing the contradiction of the pro-choice/anti-death penalty stance. But I haven't seen you also acknowledge the contradiction in the pro-life/pro-death penalty stance -- I think there are paradoxes on both sides of the issue.
I think the arguement for those who are anti-abortion but pro-death penalty (which I am not) would have to be that people who get the death penalty have receved it for something that they (supposedly) have done -- they are responsible for their own "worthiness to die" whereas if you believe in the existance of life at the time of conception, then you are killing a "baby" for no fault of it's own, simply because it's existence is a problem for others. On the other side of the coin, one who beleives in not taking life of expressly formed human beings, and one who feels that a wet spot on the bed or a little fleshy proto-being doesn't qualify as life, but rather simply a process heading towards the formation of a contiguous life, then it's no more of a problem than halting a process before it's completion. I'd think that people who can't understand this point of view tend to be the type of people who view "animals" and "humans" as being completely different things, and who believe in the concept of a soul that is somehow not corporeal and is distinct from the brain, though I have yet to find anybody who can articulate exactly what this soul is that is not actually a process/function preformed by the physical brain.
Mrs. JB, Are you saying that the paradox of what I believe, the pro-life, pro-death penalty, is that I favor life in one case and I favor death in another? If that is what you are talking about, I can explain my belief. To me, a fetus (whether it is really a "person" or not) is an innocent coming into this world. A monster like a John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer is far from being an innocent. That is why I feel that my stance is not a paradox although I can understand why some would beg to differ. It is also this thinking about innocents that make me feel that pro-abortion, anti-death penalty is a paradox. [size=1/2]A lot of my feelings about abortion stem from the fact that I think it is a "convienient (sp?) way of avoiding responsibility..[/size] EDIT - Otto's first paragraph summed up what I was trying to say above.
Manny -- the paradox I see in your stance is that you advocate the protection of a "potential" life (Roughly 15-20% or pregnancies spontaneously miscarry, so its birth is not a certainty), claiming that to do otherwise is to commit murder. But, at the same time, you advocate the killing of other fully-realized humans based on their past actions -- and the belief that they are incapable of redemption. I understand your argument is that the guilty "monster" deserves to die. But that is strictly your judgement call. Just as one having an abortion has made the judgement that their fetus is not yet a viable human life. They are both paradoxic stances, whether you want to believe it or not. Both sides have their hands dirty on this issue.
I just think that women who feel the need for an abortion are already suffering immensely. The fear of their pregnancy will outweigh any abortion law. They need help, not name calling, judgement, conviction. Compassion, understanding and forgiveness is the only way to deal with abortion, NOT ADDED SUFFERING. Each one of these women's situation is unique. There is no moral absolute.
I understand what you are saying, Mrs. JB, but do you really think "people" like Gacy, Manson, Bundy, Speck, etc. are capable of redemption? I mean there would be nothing worst than for someone like a Manson fool the parole board into thinking he had "rehabilitated" and be released and then kill who knows how many people. Of course, that could have been avoided if he had been executed like he should have a long time ago. As for the abortion issue, I sorta eluded to this in my previous post; it does bother me a great deal that a fetus has its life snuffed out like that but what bothers me more than that is that it gets its life snuffed out because it is a matter of "convienence" (sp? again). If 2 people aren't going to be responsible enough to raise a child, then they shouldn't be given an out like abortion. Once again, I know that there are extenuating circumstances in some cases, but reading where some woman decided to abort a child simply because she didn't want to have the burden of raising a child is not good enough. She and her partner should have thought about the consequences before they engaged in sex (at least use some kind of protection/birth control). However, I don't want to derail this thread by talking simply about abortion, especially when the death penalty is something that I feel doesn't get its fair share around here.
I'm saying I don't know enough to make the judgement to end their lives. Additionally, I don't have enough faith in our current criminal justice system to believe that every single person on death row is actually guilty of the crime of murder. Once again, I know that there are extenuating circumstances in some cases, but reading where some woman decided to abort a child simply because she didn't want to have the burden of raising a child is not good enough. Again, I don't know enough about each individual woman contemplating abortion to make a blanket judgement that will affect all of their lives. I don't believe that I know better how other people should live their own lives.
My only issue with the death penalty is the cost. I've constantly heard of a fact that states that it costs more to execute a prisoner than it does to give him life with no parole. Why must it be so expensive?
Funny you should mention that. When my boss and me were talking about this the other day, he mentioned a similar sentiment about the death penalty being so costly. I, of course, asked him why that was so costly and he said it was because of the appeal process. See Exhibit A or the Richard Speck video on how the prison life is nothing but the good life! Mrs. JB, I understand and that is fine. I respect your opinions on this and it has helped me to see the other viewpoint or side. Looks like I am the only one who is in favor of option #1 - so I guess this confirms what others feel about me here...that I am a weirdo!!
It is because of the cost to try those cases. It stands to reason that if you are going to take someone's life, you should give that person every opportunity to defend him/herself with as many options as possiblle to prove his/her innocence. Oftentimes, jail sentences in violent crimes take less time to try or are the result of plea bargains.
Ok...whooo...heavy issues abound... I have said elsewhere why I am anti-abortion. But I will say here, in a summarized fashio, why I am opposed to the death penalty...and if anything I have a stronger conviction about this than about abortion. 1) We state that it is justifiable to end the life of certain individuals for certain actions; most notably murdering innocents. Yet by that very process we have and will continue to do the very same ourselves. We have killed innocents, of that there is no doubt. Based on the capital punishment argument, what should be our fate? We can reverse faulty imprisonments, or at least partially..there is no means known by which we can reverse faulty excecutions, and as such we have innocent blood on our hands. So long as we are imperfect...and we are far from that...but s long as we might take even one innocent man, and tell him that we are going to kill him, and then do so....so long as that is a chance, it refutes the premise of the entire idea in and of itself. 2) Societies which espouse killing people as a means of exacting justice have, without exception, higher rates of violent crimes in that society. It follows that if we say, in general , that killing anohter human being is an accpetable solution to a probelm, individuals within that socirty will be more prone to do the same. A significantly high degree of murders are committed by people close to the accused, and usually those are done with a sense, at the time of the act, of justified action. Extend a societal belief to that specific instance, and what are the preictable results? 3) What does it say about us that, with all of our governmental, societal, technological, artisitic, and idealogical advances, we still meet out justice in the same manner as did our pre-historic ancestors, and often more? How far have we come?...The important question asked should bee not what does the act of not excecuting an offender say to that offender, but what does excecuting hiim say about us? Yeah, we all have a certain amount of antipathy for the lot of a Gacy...and were we to base our legal and social tenets on what will make us feel good for a moment in time, than killing them would satisfy some people...but we are not supposed to live in a society that bases our decisions on short term emotional satisfaction, and I certainly don't want to. 4) Studies show several interesting facts about societies with capital punishment vs. societies without: For one thing, there is the correlation to a positive relationship between capital states and violent crimes and murders...for another there is an inverse relationship between capital states and convictions...so we have more violent crimes and fewer convictions if we excecute. It would seem that even if the data were inconculsive, points 1 and 2 would sway us against excecutions...but given that it's not, and given that the reasoning for crimes is usally : setting a deterent, which it clearly doesn't, and feeling 'safer', which we shouldn't, well...I just don't get it. It all seems to come back to people wanting to see someone who has made someone else suffer and die feel likewise, and that's a pretty low aspect of human nature upon which to build a legal system. On the other hand, I have no problem with increasing the terms, or making them infinite, in certain cases...and in the case of a John Wayne Gacy or Speck, while it is possible that he might find redemption, I have no problem with throwing away the key on the grounds of protecting ourselves without sacrificing our ideal. And if he happens to have sex, or enjoys himself in prison, I could care less. Medieval justice is something we have strived to get away from, and the idea that we as a society should want to be assured that someone is 'suffereing' for the rest of his life for his actions is primative, destructive, and irrational; not my ideas for legal or moral foundation.
I can't vote in the poll. I'm anti-death penalty, anti-abortion and pro-choice. I've yet to meet anyone who identifies themselves as pro-abortion.
