Submission #4: Can you oppose abortion, but support the death penalty?

Last summer, my family and I took a family vacation to Florida. We drove from West Palm Beach to Orlando. While on this ride (we were driving on miles of open highway) I saw many pro-life billboards, and I mean dozens. There were so many, I didn’t think that Florida was such a pro- life state. I didn’t really think back on it until I saw somewhere that Florida legalized capital punishment. Florida was the first state to reintroduce the death penalty after the United States Supreme Court struck down all statutes in the 1972 Furman v. Georgia case. This struck me as a bit odd because how could such a pro-life state have the death penalty. So I did some searching and I came across this debate on debate.org that argued if you could be both pro-life and pro-capital punishment (http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-it-reasonable-for-someone-to-oppose-abortion-and-simultaneously-support-capital-punishment ). The votes were split pretty evenly, 53% saying yes, you can oppose abortion and simultaneously support capital punishment; while 47% opposed. Now, I don’t want to get into the age old abortion debate but I do want to bring up some of the points that people had on debate.org. These are straight from the website and I am just paraphrasing some things. I am not adding my personal opinion into these answers.

            For the ones who voted yes, most of the reasons argued that there is a difference between being guilty and innocent (they used the word ‘innocent’ and ‘innocence’ a lot). They said that “Abortion takes the life of someone innocent; someone who has done nothing wrong except exist” and “opposing abortion is opposing the death of an innocent life, while supporting capital punishment is punishing someone who maliciously took a human life”. Basically the argument for supporting capital punishment but opposing abortion is that abortion takes the life of an innocent being, one that has committed no crime and has not voluntarily inflicted pain onto others. For those who voted no, their reasoning was that ‘No, it is not [reasonable] because killing is killing.’ The main argument for calling it unreasonable to support the death penalty but simultaneously oppose abortion is because killing is killing no matter what. In both the death penalty and abortion, there is a life taken. One person said that there is no point in having the death penalty because it is expensive, and we could just keep the criminals in jail for life.

            From a moral standpoint, not matter if you agree or disagree, there will always be points that are valid that void yours. If you agree (to support the death penalty but simultaneously oppose abortion) then some people may say that you are a hypocrite and that both acts are still killing a being. If you oppose, then some may say that abortion kills an innocent being while capital punishment doesn’t and that it kills someone who has already done harm in this world. I feel like this is an extremely touchy subject, and that religion can come into play, which is why I didn’t want to add my personal opinion. But rather that I just wanted to explore and explain both sides of the argument and let people decide for themselves which side they would rather be on.