Do you really conflate killing an innocent baby before it has a chance to draw one breath with punishment of a criminal under that state’s laws? So, a murderer has the same moral standing as a baby who hasn’t been allowed to be born?
I’d love to hear your defense of this.
The arguments against the death penalty are many and robust.
- Life does not cease to be life when it loses its innocence. Recognition of this principle and application to policy is what distinguishes “pro-life” from being merely “anti-abortion”. Being pro-life is about more that just abortion.
- Revenge is not an aspect of justice.
- When a life is taken, the potential to correct errors and abuses is permanently gone.
- Any system of justice, however perfect, must necessarily be arbitrated by imperfect human beings; this guarantees that unintentional errors and intentional abuses will occur.
- Giving governments the power to put people to death has historically yielded poor results.
- In the current system in the US, outcomes from the criminal justice system are more closely correlated with the financial resources of the defendant than with any objective standard of right and wrong.
- The death penalty demonstrably does not deter crime.
- Where sufficient due process is in place, the death penalty is more expensive to administer than is a life sentence.
I’m sure additional reasons could be found if it were necessary but these should be more than enough. If one respects life, that is not conditional on the nature of that life. The only lawful means of taking a life, to a person who is genuinely and not incompletely pro-life, is through an act of self-defense.