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Comment by CaptainZapp | Hacker News Reader

Ok, here's a question that bugs me for decades (literally)

  For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to.

How is it that the most virulent abortion haters are such staunch believers in the death penalty?

While I'm aware that this statement is not 100% true it significantly more often than not seems to be the case.

Note that I don't intend to provoke, or get into a flame war, but I'm really curious about this utterly inconsistent view.

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Many religious people don't think the death penalty is a good thing. When I questioned a Catholic monk about this very issue he told me that while the Church condemns both the death penalty and abortion, because abortion affects tens of millions of "people" each year it's given more attention by the Church than the death penalty which affects many less people per year.

However for those that do support the death penalty while at the same time condemning abortion, it's important to realize that for them there is no inconsistency.

It goes like this: abortion is bad because the unborn are morally equivalent to birthed people (by virtue of their souls), and they are essentially innocent beings.

Criminals are not innocent, and therefore killing them is excusable.

Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent.

Thank you for the great response. Much appreciated.

  Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent

Well, what about a significant number of people executed, which were completely innocent? There are some absolutely galling stories out there about innocents being executed despite the fact that there were huge doubts on their guilt or on the verdict as such due to the conduct of the proscutor (withholding evidence, using known liars as witnesses, relying on more than dodgy "scientific" evidence, recanting of witnesses who had a personal motive to snitch in the first place, etc).

In that view the possibility of one innocent person being killed should automatically illegitimze capitol punishment. Apparently it does not.

While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty.

You made me understand, however, that this inconsistency is not applicable to a lot of those people. It doesn't make it logically less inconsistent in my view.

Anyway, thanks for the insight. It's at the very least, very interesting.

> In that view the possibility of one innocent person being killed should automatically illegitimze capitol punishment. Apparently it does not.

> While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty

I think that the Catholic view is that murder is defined as "intentional taking of innocent human life" and that it is immoral. In this case you are not intentionally taking an innocent life. Similarly in case of abortion, the church does not oppose treatments that could save the mother's life that could cause the child's death. Here, your intention is to save the mother's life, not to hurt the child. The loss of child's life is an unintenional but unavoidable side effect : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_and_the_Catholic_Ch...

The official position of the Catholic Church (The most numerous Christian denomination) is in opposition to the death penalty: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignit...

When Pope Francis addressed the United States Congress, he was chided by many for denouncing the death penalty which took 23 American lives in 2017, while staying silent on abortion, of which 652,639 took place in 2014.

There are certainly churches, typically evangelical, that are rabidly anti-abortion while promoting the death penalty, but it's less common in Catholic communities or even mainline Protestant denominations.

Just in numbers though, the number of abortions performed in a day probably dwarfs the number of death penalty executions performed in a decade. If you'd agree to outlaw abortions in exchange for outlawing the death penalty, most pro-lifers would probably take that deal in a heartbeat.

Okay, I'll bite.

I believe abortion is murder. However, I also realize it can be medically necessary if the mother's life would be threatened and so it should be permitted in that instance. Now, I don't deny that abortion is economically useful for some because it obviates personal responsibility, but I think that use is murder. There is the tricky situation when rape is involved, and while I still think it's wrong I'm not adamantly against it in that scenario.

I also believe execution is murder. However, for extreme cases I think it is necessary to execute people who have committed the worst of crimes when it can be definitively proven (e.g., rape, torture, and deliberate murder).

So in my mind both are morally wrong, but there are extreme situations where they should be permitted and I think are necessary.

> How is it that the most virulent abortion haters are such staunch believers in the death penalty?

Because babies are innocent by default and murderers are not?

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