How Can A Person Be Pro-Life And Still Support The Death Penalty?

Within the abortion debate, those who identify themselves as being both pro-life and supportive of the death penalty are sometimes called hypocrites.

While there are many pro-lifers who do not actually support the death penalty, there are also many who do, and this point deserves to be addressed.

One of the most important distinctions to make in comparing the two is to consider the life involved in each.

With abortion, there is always an innocent human life having its life ended before his or her life being ended before getting a chance to really do something with their life.

In contrast, the death penalty often (but not always) involves the lives of those who are not so innocent. Those executed usually have some guilt or criminal record that caused a jury to convict them.

To compare these issues in another way, let’s also look at the number of lives involved.

In 2008, there were approximately 1.21 million abortions performed [1].

However, in that same year there were only 37 executions.

In fact, there are about the same amount of abortions in one day as there have been executions in the history of the United States dating back to 1930 [2], [3].

While it is certainly important to give serious consideration to the death penalty issue, the number of death row inmates pales in comparison to the number of children being aborted each year.

However, as mentioned before, many people who are pro-life are against the death penalty.

Truth be told, truly being pro-life is about more than just being against abortion. It encompasses a wide variety of social issues, not just issues directly related to life.

Being pro-life means being committed to supporting and upholding the value of life in all situations.

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References

[1]The Guttmacher Institute. (2011). “In Brief Fact Sheet.” http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

[2] Antideath Penalty. (2011). http://www.antideathpenalty.org/statistics.html

[3] University of Alaska at Anchorage Justice Center. History of Death Penalty and Recent Developments. (2010). http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/death/history.html

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