It’s not about ethics, it never was. It’s about CONTROL.
It only sounds like a contradiction if you take “pro-life” literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.
Let me be clear, I’m about as firm a supporter of a woman’s right to choose as they come. I’m also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?
However, the general position of “pro lifers” does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn’t been born yet, and because it hasn’t been born, it’s completely innocent. So you have no right to take it’s life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.
There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.
I’m pro choice but also anti-death penalty, but only because if someone is horrible enough to deserve it then they don’t deserve death, because death is the easy way out of suffering. They deserve to live long, miserable lives in a 3-meter cell.
Because they don’t care about “life”.
They care about punishing people.
An unwanted unplanned baby is punishment for having sex outside of marriage.
Death penalty is punishment for being convicted of murder.
It’s perfectly consistent when you look at it all about punishment.
The cruelty is indeed the point
Makes more sense when you realise it isn’t about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
Even they don’t realize that what they spout is just a safe proxy cover for the real issues they are unable to articulate.
They would argue that the “baby” is innocent.
So was the guy they executed the other day right? So innocence might not be it either
There’s no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn’t be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies
(I’m not picking a side in the “Are fetuses people?” debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)
They’re both cruel to anyone “below” them (this is a simplistic argument.) They’re easy to cry wolf about in order to draw people over to your side, people who vote and act emotionally
Most people aren’t all that well informed and don’t do a lot of crtical thinking about their political positions on things. Many people are only guided by their emotions.
If your Church says that life begins at conception, then abortion is killing babies. So you’d be angry about abortions happening.
If you hear a horrible crime, you’re angry about that and might want the person that did that crime to be executed. If you never hear about or think about innocent people being execute, never consider the ethical problems with a government killing people, never consider the costs of it, and all the other arguments against the death penalty, then you can go through life thinking there’s no problem with it.
And even if you hear the rational arguments, they get overpowered by emotion the next time someone says “abortion is murder” or you hear about a horrible crime happening that might qualify for the death penalty.
This. People are not that complicated
Punishment. They aren’t against abortion, they’re pro punishment. They don’t think any laws should be about mitigation or helping, only as a means of punishing.
It’s in how they talk: “she should have kept her legs closed”; “that’s what you get for being a slut”; “if you don’t want to have a baby, don’t have sex”. The pregnancy is a punishment for anyone who wants to have sex, but doesn’t want to have children. And jail or death is the punishment for avoiding that previous punishment.
When talking about gun control, too: “why should I - a law abiding citizen - be punished for the actions of a few criminals?”; “ShAlL noT bE INfrInGeD”. They don’t want laws to do anything but punish. Mitigation? Expansion of freedoms of “them”? No.
Look at voter ID laws: they’re restrictive to our freedom, but proposed as punishment for “fraud”.
And it often stems from an individualistic and Evangelical ideal. Everyone is “responsible” for their actions. There are no systemic issues in the mind of an evangelical. God is punishing the individual. The laws are punishing the individual. We don’t need to change, because we includes I, and I don’t need to change, because “I’m a good Christian warrior in the fight against evil”.
And evangelicals definitely think there is a spiritual war going on, so punishment of the “wicked” is always an option. Because being wicked is an individual issue.
(Also why they think drug addiction is a moral failing of the individual, not a societal one, and therefore they should be punished).
Right now, evangelicalism and their Christofascist views are moving into political positions of power. They have tons of money coming in, and even if Fuckface 45 (their evangelical God-king warrior) doesn’t get into office, they’ll still continue to influence policy and grab seats of power.
We need to be aware of them, and stop them at every pass.
I’ll just say that able minded people, usually adults, are usually responsible of their actions.
Ok, and?
I have the same question for the opposite as well. Or for being for abortion and also vegan.
A (human) mother that carries a growing fetus is a living being. A pig, dog or a cow as well. They feel physically and emotionally and can be hurt.
A fetus is, up to a certain point, just a slab of meat.
As a vegan I don’t care about slabs of meat, I care about living beings and I think we shouldn’t hurt them.
Foetus can also feel pain and hurt, though
At which stage in development, since you seem to know this for a fact.
so you’re anti pain. that’s awesome, there’s a ton of socialist policies I’m sure you support wholeheartedly.
Like what?
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners, covering all prescription drugs, free school lunches, decommodifying housing and abolishing landlords, severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases, strict gun control and red flag laws, reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit, redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that, and I can go on for a long time but you get the gist
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
covering all prescription drugs,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
free school lunches,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
decommodifying housing
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
abolishing landlords,
I believe landlords should exist but in limited circumstances. I.E., your nice old man using a house for his retirement fund who treats his tenants well and gives them a fair price for it. I am completely against corporate and/or foreign landlords who are exploiting people for profit.
severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases,
Depends on circumstances. A good well trained police force is good, but police shouldn’t be used as therapists. If a problem can be fixed more effectively by not throwing more police at it, then I’m for not throwing police at it.
strict gun control
Yes
red flag laws,
No idea what this means, apologies
reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit,
Yes, and one of my main Christian influences in my life was a civil servant who advocated and worked for this
redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that,
Yes. That’s a great idea.
cool. I think you’re wrong about abortion on grounds of personal freedom, but at least you’re not a hypocrite.
I’m a non vegan dude but this is gonna be my easiest argument… here goes:
consent.
The foetus can’t consent
the fetus is not a person. even if it were it doesn’t matter. what matters is that it lives in the mother’s body and the mother has to consent to what happens to her body. you can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) compel people to do anything with their body, including to keep others alive.
Well, one difference is that the prisoner is not housed inside an unwilling woman’s womb. That’s not where steaks and pork chops come from either. Hope that helps.
Just guessing here, but I’d assume it’s because the unborn have potential and the bad guys had their chance. I don’t agree, but that’s what I assume being around some people like that…
You are a bad man and you should feel bad about yourself
I immediately recognized your username. Maybe take a break from the asshole shtick for sometime… and also from online.
OMG I made myself a celebrity here
Well, I at least thought it was a little funny.
I’m assuming it was sarcasm/a joke too, but hard to know these days, without either knowing someone, or the obvious /s. Some crazy people out there…
Nobody remembers poor Dr Zoidberg
I think a lot of us remember that line from Zoidberg, and if you’d used that line people might have understood your reference.
As someone recently told me, they don’t worry about saving lives, they worry about saving souls.
You need to abide by the quaint rules of the magical sky daddy for that, even if they don’t make sense.
Except clearly any aborted fetus would immediately go to heaven based on what’s written in the bible. In fact, heaven should be absolutely completely full of dead babies based on miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. if you believe that they get a soul at the moment of conception.
So that logic doesn’t really make sense either. Which is par for the course.
Actually, nobody goes to heaven when they die (according to the bible). Everyone must wait until judgement day when all the graves, etc, open and we all face judgement at that point. This surprised me when I first learned it because it goes against all the Christian culture I’ve ever been taught and experienced.
So grandma isn’t currently in heaven no matter how good she was.
That’s a huge relief that perhaps my grandparents haven’t seen my embarrassing moments after all.
and judgement is not “brought back to life just to be sent back immediately”… no, it will be a good span of time to live without evil on the earth…
Uhh no? Non-baptized souls go to limbo according to Christian theology.
That depends on which flavor of Christianity you’re looking at, but even the Catholics don’t think they go to Limbo, the pope had an entire study done on it, and the result was “we hope they go to heaven but we don’t know”
A lot of the other denominations don’t subscribe to the original sin shtick, and therefore babies would go to heaven even without being baptized.
I always loved the “do uncontacted remote tribes that haven’t heard of God or Jesus go to heaven?” question. So far everyone has answered yes. And then you realize that Christians could save everyone, everywhere, forever, just by destroying all their literature, not teaching religion, and letting it die with them. One sacrificial generation and everyone is saved forever.
But they won’t do it because of greed and pride, the core aspects of their belief system.
Lots of them believe it is written on our hearts and uncontacted tribes have rejected Jesus.
Catholics
I was juuuuuuust about to explain how making sense isn’t a requirement to them, until I saw your last sentence. Then I knew you already get it.
I dont think it really has anything to do with that. A state recently sued due to abortion and teen pregnancy reduction efforts leading to decreased teenage pregnancy rates arguing something along the lines of our populations are going down and it will cost us in population, political representation, and federal resources.
This is about cheap/free labor, disenfranchising women, and maintaining a permanent disabled and poverty-stricken underclasses that keep everyone on up in line with the hierarchy
Stop being right!
sounds left to me
But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say “take the deal, or the court will fuck you”.
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there’s no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can’t say he didn’t do it, and wasn’t even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn’t in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I’d favor death but since we don’t I can’t go that far.
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person’s right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably* not be legal, I’ll add that it’s not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn’t start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
*I say “probably” because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don’t believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
But should we even punish?
I don’t mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it’s two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn’t deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don’t think so.
I’m not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I’m just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I’m not trying to excuse criminals, I’m just saying that punishment doesn’t work.
One aspect of punishment is retribution for the victims when there is nothing else and another is to keep people that are harmful away in order to keep other people safe.
Here in Sweden we have a current massive problem with organized crime that are now systematically abusing our criminal justice system that is built on humanitarian ideals for rehab and protecting suspects and criminals rights to the absurd. So yes, in those cases I think punishment will do. Cynically abusing protection measures of society deserves punishment. It may not change those individuals for the life they have chosen for themselves but it will keep them out of making even more damage to society and violent crime against individuals and I honestly see no problem in harsh consequences for their own decisions.
I’m all about scientific research, especially when it goes against the grain, but the idea of getting caught being a bigger deterrent than the punishment is just, weird?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
I think the idea is that the thing that stops you in the moment is “I likely won’t get away with it” more than “if they catch me there’ll be hell to pay … but only if”.
I mean you’re (as in the informal general usage of “you”, not as the second person pronoun) not going to pull out your phone while driving, if you’re next to a cop. But if there’s no one around that even looks like an undercover traffic cop?
Human brains are bad at thinking in long term consequences, but immediate consequences? Those we understand.
I see what you’re saying and understand that criminals have poor judgment, especially long term.
I still think that there is a natural idea of consequences, even if latent. If no consequences, the only thing about getting caught is having to do whatever thing you’re doing again, ie losing time.
Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don’t do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of “it’s against the rules”
The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances
It doesn’t work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
