(Prolifer)ations 5-29-12
by Kelli
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- In our newest addition to the blogroll, Kelly Clinger tells of her difficult decision to confess her two past abortions to her young children.
- At Live Action, Jennie Stone shows once again that despite attempted media and pro-choice political spin, Planned Parenthood’s main “service” to pregnant women is abortion – and something they do every 97 seconds. Staggering.
- Big Blue Wave links to LifeNews regarding a new medical journal report which “completely debunks the Guttmacher Institute numbers on ‘unsafe’ abortions in several Latin American countries.” It appears the research arm of Planned Parenthood is – surprise, surprise – heavily overstating the number of clandestine abortions in various countries in an effort to pressure their governments into legalizing abortion.
- Culture Campaign links to an interview with late-term abortionist Willie J. Parker (pictured left), who claims his “Christian faith” led him to the conclusion that “the happiness of the mother outweighs ‘the life of a pre-viable or lethally flawed fetus.'” Parker also states:
The women most likely to be in those [second trimester abortion] situations are trapped in poverty, often women of color or poor socioeconomic backgrounds, less education, and women and girls at the extremes of reproductive age.When did killing become a solution for any of these issues?
- Generations for Life reports on the increasing number of pro-life youth in Europe who are making their voices heard.
- At Americans United for Life, Charmaine Yoest believes the most recent Gallup poll fails to accurately reflect the percentage of pro-life Americans. Yoest claims it is higher than 50%:
During the healthcare debates we saw that 7 in 10 Americans – pro-life and pro-choice – did not want to see their tax monies going to fund abortion, and we’ve seen tremendous support for commonsense limits on abortion – such as limiting abortion after 20 weeks because of the health risks to women and requiring parental involvement in the abortion decisions of young girls.We also know that when it comes to voting, those motivated to protect life vote 2 to 1 compared to those who want unfettered, unregulated abortion.
- At Ethika Politika, Mattias Caro discusses the issues surrounding the death penalty and human dignity, pointing out that unlike any other creature in the known universe, humans are moral agents, responsible for our actions. He writes:
Most debates on the death penalty lead to a co-op on the lack of moral authority for the agent executor to carry out the act. “Who are we to kill someone out of revenge?” or “What if we execute the wrong person?”….All of these… only address the moral role of the executioner. They are not questions that address a basic concern, “Do some actions simply warrant death?”
[Photo via feministsforchoice.com]
May.29, 2012 3:30 pm |
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Gee, Dr. Parker must be reading from the same bible as Obama.
You’re right, Jill. These women will still be poor, less educated, and from lower socio-economic backgrounds after their abortions, but now they will also have a dead baby.
@phillymiss
Surely you remember the 6th commandment “thou shalt only murder for thy own happiness”?
One of my best friends is very liberal and he is mostly anti-death penalty. I am very conservative and I am…wishy-washy but not entirely against it. We talk politics a lot, he and I (and we love each other, so it’s okay, which is weird). I remember he once said to me that he agreed that some people deserved to die when their crimes are sufficiently horrendous. His concern is that there are not close enough safe-guards to be sure that only guilty persons are executed. And with that, I have to agree. So, at least in some cases, the Ethika Politika question du jour has been answered, “Yes. But that is not the only question that must be answered.”
Yes Dr. Parker because God’s Word clearly states that our happiness is paramount. Good grief.
I’m pretty conflicted by the death penalty as well, Alice, although my head tells me I should be against it. Your post sums it up well.
What a sad post from Kelly Clinger, though I’m glad to see that her confession has turned out to be a good thing for her family.
I spent years on the fence but have finally become convinced that the death penalty is wrong. I know that in some cases it is said that the death penalty can be morally justified. However, I believe that is only in order to protect society from the criminal, and only in the most dire circumstances where there is no other option to do so. And I no longer believe it is necessary to protect society as I believe we can 99.9999% of the time ensure the criminal is unable to do further harm. And I do not believe it can be justified as “payback” or “just retribution.”
I think…a lot of things about the death penalty but I will try for the short version.
I think there are cases where putting someone in jail more is insufficient. Where the horror of their crimes is so great that the only fair punishment is the forfeiture of their life. I think that this is so because life is such a valuable commodity. That when a person takes another person’s life in a monstrous and horrific way the only thing that person has left to give up that would be equal in value to what they took is their own life. I think that justice means that bad people pay back what they have taken in equal measure and surrender of freedom is not an equal measure to stealing a life. I think that while God can know a person’s heart and grant them forgiveness, the justice system is not God and has a responsibility to meet out justice even when that means acting harshly.
And I think that the above paragraph, while expressing things I absolutely believe are true, has two major problems. First off, it’s very vague. I think most people would agree with what I wrote. (Obviously, Bryan, you have disagreed directly with some of it, but the general principles are affirmed by most, I feel.) However, most people would also quibble over which specific case is “bad enough” and how that should be determined and who should make the call. It’s all well and good to discuss these principles in an academic sense, but without clear and specific guidelines as to how they should play out in the real world, then that is all that they are well or good for. Second, nothing in what I wrote addresses the racial imbalance in the application of the death penalty. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I do recall being shocked and disgusted by them. They are stark. Unless something has radically changed since I looked at them, black people are sentenced to death at a much higher rate than whites who have committed the same crimes. If I understand correctly, once a crime meets a certain legal standard, it is generally up to a prosecutor whether to seek the death penalty or not. I think that this policy does not sufficiently address the first problem I mentioned of when a capital punishment can be responsibly applied, and plays directly into creating the second.
All told, I can not hold myself satisfied with the way this practice is carried out in the United States. And without seeing these issues addressed, if I had the power, I would put a moratorium on capital punishment. And if there never came a time when those concerns were dealt with, that ban would never be lifted.
So, there you go. Not as short as I’d hoped, but less long than it could have been. I’m still not satisfied with where I am over all this, so I may feel differently as time passes, but that’s my current thought process.
Bryan: “I … finally become convinced that the death penalty is wrong. I know that in some cases it is said that the death penalty can be morally justified. However, I believe that is only in order to protect society from the criminal, and only in the most dire circumstances where there is no other option to do so.”
Wow, that’s incredibly unjust. You’re deprive a person of life for the benefit of others — not because s/he deserved it?
I’m not bothered by what a society does with the death penalty as long as it can be justly used — and that’s been a proven problem too often. It might be wise to do otherwise. But if the death penalty makes any sense at all, it’s because death is a deserved punishment — the forfeiture of one’s own life as a consequence of taking someone else’s. This demonstrates a high value of human life: it is so precious that if you destroy it, you forfeit your own.
But the idea that we can give ANYONE a punishment merely to protect others, is really really unethical. Punishment that’s not deserved is unjust by definition. And if we protect people by means that are unjust to others . . . wow. That’s a huge problem with “justice.”
I’m against the death penalty, but can respect both sides of the issue. I do have to say that having it really raises the stakes in the event of a wrongful conviction.
I’m for and against the death penalty. I really don’t know what is right or wrong in regards to that. Whenever I read arguments against it I think “That makes sense! I’m against it!” and then I read arguments for it and I think “That makes sense too! I’m for it!”
I am not a person lacking opinions. So the fact that I feel this way is amazing. This is probably the only issue that I don’t see a clear moral stance.
If someone killed me I would not want them to be put to death. I would want them to live and repent of what they’ve done and seek God’s forgiveness. I would hope that they would seek God and that someday I would rejoice with them in heaven. I would not want them to be executed and perish in hell.
However, if someone killed my kids, not only would I want them DEAD I would want them tortured before they died. Thats truly how I feel. That might not seem “pro-life” or kind or Christian but I feel so viscerally when it comes to my kids that I know I would want blood. Whether the justice system would give me that or not I don’t know but I know if someone hurt my kids I would want the death penalty.
As a Catholic, I’ve struggled in trying to conform my conscience to the Church’s teaching about the death penalty, I’ve read such absolutely horrific stories of murderers (Bittaker and Norris come to mind) that just have no conscience and no remorse about snuffing out innocent lives. So many of these murderers do not repent and, though locked up in cells, get to eat pretty decent food, read books, work out, and enjoy some basic pleasures of life. And then I think about that mom or dad whose child was brutally murdered, tortured, whatever. They will never see their son or daughter (depending on the age at time of murder) graduate high school, college, or even marry and have kids. It’s so unjust.
Was trying to find my edit function (so I could correct some of my punctuation!) and could not.
Sydney, I can totally relate to you. When it comes to our kids, we’d step in front of a truck that was heading towards them. It’s so difficult to separate our feelings and emotions as parents. Unfortunately, if our feelings dictated our behavior life would probably be much messier that it already is. Was just reading about that poor precious boy, Etan Patz, murdered in 1979. A guy came forward and confessed to the murder. I hope there’s justice there.
rasqual – I did not mean to insinuate that the death penalty be applied to someone who does not deserve it. To me, that is an obvious underlying point that I did not state assuming that everyone already believes that. Clearly, we are only going to apply it to people who have done something heinous enough to merit the punishment. And I agree with the people who have serious concerns about how justly it is applied and whether or not we can be certain that the people suffering that punishment are guilty without question.
However, assuming first that those conditions are true, then the question becomes whether or not we can be justified in the taking of a life of a criminal. I do not see retribution as adequate justification. Rather, I believe that the death penalty should only be used as an absolute last resort to protect society. I do not believe that we have the right to take someone’s life and as a result take away any chance they may have for future repentance and reconciliation with God just for the sake of retribution. And given our current ability to prevent serious criminals from future crimes, I do not believe it is necessary to use the death penalty for that purpose.
So while the questions of equal application and certain guilt matter, I see them as moot points since there is no justification for the death penalty anyway. And while I may be explaining it poorly, that is the teaching fo the Catholic Church. From the Catechism…
2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” *the quote is from John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae
By the way, that section of the Catechism dealing with the 5th commandment is really worth a read, Catholic or not. It deals with self defense, murder, abortion euthanasia, scientific research on humans, and war. Whether you agree with the Catholic Church or not, I am not sure there is much if anything in that section of the Catechism with which anyone would take issue.
I was pretty unhappy after the birth of my second child, Blaise. Maybe I just should’ve followed my heart and threw him in the dumpster?
Bryan,
A murderer can still repent before he or she is executed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jumping up and down shouting halleluiah when I hear of a murderer being put to death. What gets under my skin is when candlelight vigils are held outside of the prisons of someone who’s about to be executed – as if there’s a moral equation between the guilty being executed and the innocent person that was murdered.
Doe – I am not a death penalty abolition activist. My thinking about the issue has gradually shifted over a long period of time. But please take a moment to think about a few things. Many of us do things in our lives that seem perfectly fine at the time we do them. And sometimes it takes many years before we understand the truth of what we have done. It took me 12 years to understand the truth of my vasectomy. Ask any of the post-abortive women on this site who have found healing how many years it took them. Who are we to decide that a murderer only has until next Tuesday at noon to repent before we stick a needle in his arm and take away any possibility of future repentance? How about we leave it up to God how long they have to repent? And if we think prayerful vigils are good for women experiencing troubled pregnancies and their unborn children, why not for people facing execution? Are we supposed to love people more or less based on their particular sins? We are all sinners, and we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are also told that we will be forgiven as we forgive others. So why would we love those facing execution any less than the innocent unborn? Should we love what they have done? Absolutely not. But they need our forgiveness and love just like post-abortive women who have equally killed an innocent person, although under different circumstances. I do not think anyone is equating the guilty person being executed with the innocent person that was murdered. I just think people are convicted that the death penalty is wrong and are trying to do something about – just like the active Pro-Lifers. The death penalty issue is more murky than abortion in that long-accepted moral teaching says the death penalty may be OK under certain circumstances as a last resort where abortion is considered always wrong in all circumstances by many. For me, at least, the gradual change in opinion about the death penalty has occurred as I have come to believe that our society has the means to ensure we are all protected from the most heinous criminals, and that the death penalty no longer has a moral purpose.
Bryan,
I do believe the death penalty can serve a moral purpose. The execution of a murderer gives justice to the victim’s family. No, it will never bring the loved one back. But, it sends the message that as a society we will not tolerate this. The issue of forgiving the murderer is also a tough one for me. The murderer needs the forgiveness of the family since the dead victim obviously cannot forgive. Do I have a right to forgive Ted Bundy or Charles Manson? I am not a family member of the victims that they brutally murdered. What right do I have to forgive someone that did not directly inflict evil upon me personally? I can pray that they have a conversion of heart and repent.
Sydney M says:
May 29, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Absolutely %100 how I feel about it all too! Wish I could “like” more than once sometimes!