Why would any Pro-Lifer defend the Inquisition?
Just wait and see. I know a few who might try.
Because the stupid is a mile deep when it comes to this period in history, and there's nothing quite so insufferable as Christians posturing and preening their contempt for the Inquisition when they have zero historical knowledge of it and don't know the slightest thing about what it was and WHY it was.
I'm happy to debate specific instances & trials, some of which were outrageous....and I'll note that the Church itself voided and threw out one of those: the trial of St. Joan of Arc which had numerous canonical irregularities.
But as for the generality of the thing, try reading some primary sources and some good modern historians like Jeffrey Burton Russell.
First of all, you have to understand one thing. Heresy back then was a SECULAR crime punishable by THE STATE. This was a carryover from pagan law codes (why do you think Socrates was executed, and the early Christians?).
However, this arrangement was extremely rife with abuse: if I am your magistrate, all I have to do is get you taking for 15 minutes on the Trinity and I can pretty much guarantee you will say something heretical. "How many operations are there in the Godhead? How many wills?" Oh, lookee here, you're a heretic, let me condemn you to death and take your land.
The Inquisition was begun to reform this process. The Church said no way...you secular authorities have no right to charge and try people for heresy. That's the CHURCH's job, and the Church's alone.
So the Church took over the fact-finding phase of the trial from the state. It basically made the determination whether the person was an obstinate heretic or not and then...AND THEN *passed that finding onto the secular court*. If you read the trials of the day you find on a guilty conviction the phrase:
"And he was handed over to the secular arm to be burned"
We can argue whether this was a good policy or not. In point of fact though it was a reform, it had its own problems that we know about....especially in Spain. It used torture (just like the secular courts of the day) which not surprisingly, ended up in false confessions.
But genocide? That's absurd. The Inquisition had--if I remember right--something like a 95% acquittal rate. Ninety five freaking percent. Plenty of Catholic saints were brought before the Inquisition (St. Ignatius), they investigated, found nothing wrong, and turned them loose again. The amount of people it condemned to death--and remember, it wasn't killing them, the STATE was killing them--was on the order of a few thousand, perhaps up to 10,000. Over hundreds of years.
And since it was an ecclesiastical court, you HAD TO BE A CHRISTIAN to be brought before it. It had zero, ZERO authority over Jews and Muslims...except those who became Christians for whatever reason.
I don’t have a clue why a pro-lifer would defend the inquisition.