How come people who are against abortion are in favor of the death penalty? Kind of seems like a contradicition/
How come people who are against abortion are in favor of the death penalty? Kind of seems like a contradicition/
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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.
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But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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They're obsessed with punishment. A lot of them see unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for recreational sex.
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I think they just see it as very simple: killing innocent babies - no, killing evil criminals - yes. It sounds perfectly alright if you don't think about it too much.
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Because they don't care about "life".
They care about punishing people.
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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
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The death penalty doesn't control women.
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Because it's never been about anything other than control. The right to choose anything is abhorrent to them. The only rights they want you to have are the right to be dictated to and the right to be like them.
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Because it's not about saving lives, it never has been. It's about control.
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contradiction
You’ve discovered conservative politics. Party of freedom that wants to restrict women’s access to healthcare, books in schools, reproductive rights, healthcare for children, etc.
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Ain't Taliban follows the same method of eradicating women empowerment!
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It's not all the same people: Roman Catholics, for example, tend to oppose both.
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Roman Catholic doctrine opposes both, but the bishops don't go around threatening to withhold religious services for politicians who allow the death penalty like they do with pro-choice politicians....
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I could have sworn that there was a news story of Peloci being denied the sacrament due to her supporting an abortion bill.
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In the end, it's because they're told that that's the way it is.
Abortion makes a an easy political point. Vote for the children.
Being hard on crime and executing people, That's another easy political point. Vote for the law abiding citizens.
They don't care that those two things are at odds They don't care about life or death. They care about their own exact situation, and don't really give a rat's ass about anyone else. They believe that the team they're backing gives them the best advantage, and that's absolutely all they care about. Beyond that, it's simply consuming and regurgitating the propaganda, self-perpetuating.
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Kind of seems like a contradiction
They don't care. There's no point in calling conservatives out on hypocrisy. Only a very small number of them will give a shit, and those will be the ones who were already having doubts.
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Precisely this. From a philosophical-logical POV, it doesn't make sense. From the POV of establishing and maintaining power/ dominance/ oppression/ hegemony, however, it's the only thing that makes sense.
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Because with reactionaries, the cruelty is the point.
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They would argue that the "baby" is innocent.
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So was the guy they executed the other day right? So innocence might not be it either
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I'm pro-choice, but mostly anti-death penalty, isn't that a contradiction?
I don't really think so. A person's bodily autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap.
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I think it's not necessarily a contradiction to hold your pro-choice and anti-death penalty stance, but it's still a contradiction to hold the pro-life and pro-death penalty stance if your reasoning behind the pro-life stance is that all life is sacred.
I agree that a person's body autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap, but I still think that giving the "all life is sacred" line to justify pro-life and then being pro-death penalty "because some people deserve to die" amounts to hypocrisy.
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They don't actually care about life, they just don't want women to have control over their bodies.
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Because they are hypocrites, once that baby leaves the womb they give zero fucks.
Don't get an abortion, also we aren't paying for that kids lunch
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Forced birthers don't actually care about "life". They care about violently controlling anybody who isn't a pale bro.
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Liberals in favor of reproductive rights also tend to be against the death penalty. Is that a contradiction? Conservatives love twisting this into “they want to kill babies, not criminals.”
Do you think they’re right about that? Or is it more nuanced of an issue? If it’s more nuanced of an issue, then it’s more nuanced in both directions.
Liberals prioritize the woman’s ability to decide what happens with her body. They don’t like abortions, but they think they must be allowed if that’s what the woman chooses. They also recognize that it’s a medical procedure that’s absolutely necessary sometimes and other times might prevent an unwanted child from being born into bad circumstances. Meanwhile, liberals tend to be against the death penalty because our justice system is very flawed and innocent people have been put to death in the past. Perhaps a woman is allowed to decide what happens to a congregation of cells inside her body, but people shouldn’t decide the life or death of other people when imprisonment is always there as an option.
Conservatives think in terms of essentials and things are very black and white. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. They think life comes from god so it’s his affair and not our place to countermand a new life that he’s just brought into being. Meanwhile if a grown person with a mind chooses to commit crimes, that’s on them. God makes some pretty hard judgments in the Bible so they think great we can too and that will make us like god. Conservatives also tend to believe that some people are essentially good, and others are essentially bad. And in that framework, once a person has shown themselves to be a criminal, you know they are bad so what’s the point of letting them live. Meanwhile you have no idea if a fetus in the womb will be good or bad yet.
Please don’t downvote me for understanding both positions :)
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It's not about ethics, it never was. It's about CONTROL.
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IS it a contradiction? I don't agree with the death penalty or anti-abortion position, but I don't see some essential link between either position. You can hold two different beliefs about two different things is how come.
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They literally call themselves pro-life and then express support for the death penalty.
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Sure, but OP didn't ask, 'How can people call themselves pro-life but are be for the death penalty?' I'm not one to hang onto whatever catch phrases or name a movement lands with. Should* I expect the land back movement to, say, lay down on the ground as a for of protest? 'BUT LAND BACK IS IN THE NAAAAAAAME'. Do we think defund the police want there to be nobody to apprehend, say, right-wing terrorists?
Edit; accidentally a word
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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.
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I blame religion.
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I'm pro abortion and against the death penalty! Someone ask me! I promise I'm not a troll. I am honestly pro abortion not just pro choice.
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What do you mean by that? You’re an anti-natalist?
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Nope. I actually think life is sacred. The reason I'm pro-abortion is because I think anything that can be done to further impede children being born when we have hundreds of thousands of children in America alone who are orphans. That is a travesty.
My challenge to anyone who is anti-abortion would be are they adopting? Because their shit position is perpetuating a stream of children being born without someone to care for them either physically or emotionally.
In a perfect world, abortion would not exist outside of medical necessity. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world and as such many women are having children to be born into a cold and loveless world.
It's sad. I could not imagine how cruel someone would have to be to be anti-abortion and yet so willing to effectively let a child's life be aborted once they're born.
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I think they're pro-edgelord
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welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.
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It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.
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Because they’re goddamned thoughtless morons.
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They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
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If you smoke weed you're more likely to wear converse. It's aesthetics. When someone says they're anti abortion I usually see it as aesthetics. They want others to see them as being anti abortion. That's what they get out of it.
It isn't a literal belief. Democrats reduce abortions, much better than cons. Being anti abortion should mean voting for Democrats... IF you were still taking things literally. It's not misinformation or lack of education, it's misaligned priorities.
They're just trying to be a tribe and signal allegiance. To have literal beliefs that you live by regardless of "your side" is a completely different game to what they're playing.
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To be fair to those people (which I'm really not inclined to be), I'm pro-choice but strongly against the death penalty. So I guess it swings both ways.
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it doesn't swing both ways. They are claiming the position of being "pro life" which is clearly hypocritical. No one on the other side is claiming to be "pro death" or "anti life".
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That's a good point, actually. I hadn't thought it through enough.
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These same people also solve seem to give af about the suffering of children outside of the border of the country.
I've yet to hear any evangelical cry about dead Palestinian children or the suffering of children on the other side of the American Mexican border.
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They want men to choose who lives or dies. They absolutely do not want women to be in charge of anything. That's why no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. A man made a decision, they don't want a woman to have the power to reverse it.
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The suffering is the point. It's got nothing to do with morals or human rights or the death penalty or abortion or "Christian values". It's all about making "those people" suffer.
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Because it's not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.
It's about curtailing choice.
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It's a jeebus said so thing. Babies need to be baptized and sinners need to be sent to hell.
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Punishment fetish.
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Makes more sense when you realise it isn't about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
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I think that can be explained, but tell me how someone can be in favor of the death penalty but be against assisted suicide.
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I obviously don't agree with them, but my assumption is that it has to do with maturity/innocence. An unborn child hasn't done anything wrong. They're full of opportunity and have a whole life ahead of them. A criminal sentenced for death has I some way done something very wrong. They've had their chance and failed.
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Because the inmates deserve it. The babies don’t.
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The common thread is harm and punishment. They wish harm to those they would punish for the transgressions they make up in their heads
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It ultimately is religious belief.
Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.
Everything else is just window dressing.
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The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where 'pro-choice' people draw the line. The 'pro-life' view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
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To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
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For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don't want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother's death and it's not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it's better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn't have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she's dying.
That said, I don't think there's anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don't want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It's better that it be considered a medical standard.
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I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What's wrong with this?
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Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn't be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I've noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
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For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it's less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
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Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they'd be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
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Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
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I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is 'pro-life,' I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re 'pro-choice,' I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there's no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the 'truth' is there somewhere in between.
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If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn't want an abortion. It's therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.
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I'm trying to be the devil's advocate here: one could say that one is an innocent "life" while the other is not.
104 comments
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
Well, I at least thought it was a little funny.
I immediately recognized your username. Maybe take a break from the asshole shtick for sometime... and also from online.