Sometimes Pro-Life

[Phoebe]

Many people I know are upset about the death penalty, which recently came up in the news. I don't like the death penalty either, for reasons that don't have much if anything to do with pro-life reasons (the state shouldn't have that power when it doesn't need to; we don't need it to protect or deter anything; it's expensive and prone to horrible bias and error). But people seem to be upset about the death penalty for pro-life reasons, as they are quite viscerally disturbed by its exercise and shocked by the hypocrisy of Catholic elected officials reconciled to carrying it out. Yet in any other situation, the same people would be very upset if Catholic elected officials were influenced by their religious beliefs in decisions about governance, and most of these same people are strongly pro-choice when it comes to abortion. This is one of those moments when I sit on my hands because I like the prospect of having friends and perhaps multiplying the number of them I have. However, this bugs me. If we want religion out of politics, then let's not complain when politicians are religious hypocrites, because we might demand it of them sometimes. And if you want people to sympathize with your visceral horror at the idea of a murderer being executed, then I think at least you owe it to anti-abortion people to try to sympathize with their visceral horror at the idea of aborting a baby as well.

[Mike]

Only speaking for the Catholics, the Pope has stated unequivocally that the death penalty is unacceptable in all situations.

Watching Nebraska Catholics celebrating because we reinstated the death penalty and finally used it to kill someone again is unsettling.

[Phoebe]

Yes, that is the fun flip side of the phenomenon I'm seeing among my pro-choice non-catholic friends right now. I'm pretty sure that much of my extended family falls into the Catholic pro-death penalty Kamp, which the Google Voice to Text has mysteriously given a capital K so I'm just going to leave it that way. It has been doing a lot of remarkable things lately that lead me to think I should give it some free rein in developing its independent intelligence. But sorry guy, you only get rein because I'm still riding this horse, not the reign you apparently want. The point is I'm not talking to any of my Catholic relatives this week for a reason. Much like I didn't really want to know when some of them didn't care about medical care for immigrant babies, because the main thing is that white people didn't have abortions, I don't want to know if they're in favor of the death penalty even as they support excommunication of politically pro-choice Catholics. My close friend from childhood works for the diocese and luckily is uncompromising on being pro-life across the spectrum of issues. I can live with that pretty well except for when it comes to end-of-life medical interventions.

[mimekiller]

Yea its a pretty no brainier to me that the death penalty is just flat out wrong. Even if it has a 99 percent success rate in executing guilty people that one percent of innocent people being murdered by the state is unforgivable.

[Bonefish]

But, think of the moral satisfaction it provides, after a decade of housing a prisoner in an expensive facility, for them to be put to death! The ULTIMATE punishment. Unless I guess you believe in a God and afterlife, at which point... whatever.

Death Penalty is popular here. Again, I don't get it. It's just expensive. The justice system is suspect, so any executions is suspect. And it's crap. It's not a scary incentive. It takes years to be executed. If you're the kind of person who gets caught up in a death sentence, odds are you are young, dumb, poor, and, maybe white. Especially for the non white folks, you might actually have a higher survival rate on death row than back in the world. It's crazy.

[Phoebe]

I understand where death penalty proponents are coming from when they explain that only the most severe punishment they can imagine seems fitting or appropriate to the most serious crime they can imagine. I think many of them feel it would be very disrespectful to the victims, regardless of what the victim's family may think about it, if some sort of lesser penalty is given. It's like saying their life isn't worth as much, or is no different than suffering some other kind of serious crime like being assaulted but living through it. It doesn't sit well with some people and I sympathize with that. perhaps punishment ought to be more retributive than it is, or retributive in a way that makes more sense, I suppose. It's not like there's a magic number of years you should spend in prison for doing a particular action, but most people think that punishment has to be about more than keeping the rest of us safe or rehabilitating the offender.

Apart from this I can't understand why anybody would think the death penalty was a good idea for practical reasons. It's not all that difficult to study whether it's a deterrent, and it's not one, not any more than other things would be. If you really wanted a deterrent, try doing something more barbaric that the prisoner will live through. And if you think something more barbaric is wrong then why are you supporting a death penalty anyway? I don't mean any particular you, just the universal y'all.

If someone has a better pro-death penalty argument I would be interested in hearing it because this is probably the issue on which I have the least ability to change views. It just seems so obvious that it's not even a dilemma. There's only that one argument for it I can respect, or if we lived in some kind of harsh circumstances where the killers would get loose and reoffend easily, we'd have another good argument.

[Walrus]

The 'pro-life' movement is horrendusly miss-named. If you want to call them 'pro' something, then call them pro-birth.

the group is anti-education, anti-science, anti-women. anti-humanity in most measurable ways.

My response to "I'm a pro-lifer" is usually, "you're a bigoted self centred idiot." and walking away.

[Phoebe]

I think those charges apply to some who call themselves pro-life, but not all by a long shot. I would say that the pro-life view is generally prevalent in my area (both Republicans and Democrats), so I get to see an ideological clash play out between those who seem to me to be sincerely pro-life and also pro-baby, pro-mother, pro-caring about human life across the board, and those who are totally hypocritical about it and are pro-life basically because their self-identified Tribe is pro-life and they would like to grouse about loose women. Of course, those loose women should pay for their own birth control (the more you pay, the looser you are, obviously), and also shouldn't have babies for whom they can't pay. Men aren't even discussed as part of this picture, and if the babies aren't white, I don't think they really care about abortion at all. These people are sometimes of the "women's bodies have a way of shutting that down" school of biology, so there is no confusing moral gray area regarding post-rape abortion - if you don't ever need one, where is the problem?

[Walrus]

fair,

I have yet to meet one of those kind of pro-life folks.

[bralbovsky]

I am anti-abortion, mostly because in this country it is a tool of genocide. As a policy matter, I consider it a medical decision, and therefore, none of my business. (which throws it into the maelstrom of bad medical policy, but we can talk about the other benefits of single payer later)

I have been against the death penalty for practical reason for a long time. A number of years ago I served on a grand jury, and that solidified it. (I learned three things: My life is terrific, Always get a lawyer, It's impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys.)

Those are morally tinged, but not strictly moral positions, certainly not "pro-life," because I would absolutely advocate (perhaps have, here in these forums) that there are people the world would be better off without, right now. How those selections are made (I have a personal list, that I do not share, but it has criteria) and what methods I prefer (mostly quick, obliterative, or ignoble), likely would also be classified morally tinged, but they are hardly religious.

One of the things real life debate, about the death penalty, or abortion or tolerance for Trump, highlights, is how flimsy and sad some folks' "moral" or "religious" convictions are.