RIGHT TO THE CHIN

Stop! You're Killing Me: Teh Death Penalty and Abortion

from Enigma

The recent controversy surrounding outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan’s decision to overturn the sentences of all 157 inmates on Illinois’ death row has led to some interesting talk around the water cooler, and some unchecked idiocy within the so-called “progressive” and “enlightened” segments of our population.

Ryan, who recently appeared on Oprah, overturned the death sentences chiefly because of the fear that innocent people might be executed. He cites Illinois as being in serious error when it came to convicting the right people. Since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, the state has exonerated 13 death row inmates, while executing only 12.

“We found out that the error rate (of convicting innocents) was 60%,” Ryan told Oprah. "That's six in ten people...I determined the only way I could be safe in what I was going to do was to issue a blanket clemency.”

While Ryan’s fear is mildly understandable, his actions are questionable.

Despite the flaws and abuses in our legal system that lead to unlawful convictions of innocent people, nobody (including members of anti-death penalty groups) has ever seemed to come up with the name of ONE innocent person who has actually been executed. The ACLU, for example, has a page on its web site titled, “Stop the Execution of the Innocent!” If you actually read the page, however, you’ll notice that, in fact, NO accounts of innocent people being executed are cited – only a few close calls.

While hundreds of people have sat wrongly accused on death row, hundreds have also been set free due to DNA testing. And with the lengthy appeals process now in place, it is practically impossible for an innocent person to be put to death. The three recently freed men who appeared on Oprah with Ryan would likely have been freed even if Ryan had not issued his unjust blanket clemency. Their cases were completely independent of others’ on Illinois’ death row with certain, undeniable guilt. The same DNA testing that can free innocent men from wrongful execution, can also free victims’ families from a lack of justice.

Those of us who support the death penalty often take a good deal of verbal abuse from those of you who don’t. We’re accused of being “cold” and “cruel,” while you pat yourselves on the back for being “compassionate” and “caring.”

And those of us who believe in the death penalty but are also against abortion are accused of being “hypocrites.” As one local writer recently put it, we must be “blissfully unaware” of the “implicit hypocrisy of our positions.” If this writer’s statement weren’t so sad, it would be ironic and humorous.

People who are pro-abortion choose to downgrade the value of human life by refusing to call innocent, unborn children, “babies.” They instead call them “fetuses” or “cells,” and label themselves the friendlier and meaningless “Pro-Choice,” further denying, and sterilizing themselves from, the truth of what they really support. Those who are “Pro-Choice,” and who decide to have abortions, most often do so to “correct a mistake” so that they can “get on with their lives.” And when opposed on the topic of abortion, they accuse those in opposition as having “no right” to tell them what “they can do with their bodies.” The last time I checked, it wasn’t their bodies that were being sucked into a sink.

Regardless of where you stand on abortion, or what you choose to call yourself or the unborn child, the fact remains that EVERY unborn child who has ever been aborted was innocent when it was killed. At least 40 million have died since Roe vs. Wade. And that’s not counting abortions in other countries, unreported abortions, or abortions performed before Roe vs. Wade.
The death penalty is different from abortion. Plain and simple. Those who are put to death are guilty of murder. They have forfeited their rights, and are punishable by our laws. And while it is a travesty that many innocent people have spent many years on death row, those guilty of murder are no less guilty because the system bringing them to justice is flawed.

Everybody is talking about “rights” these days. Some argue that women should have the “right” to have an abortion. Some would argue that killers have a “right” to live after denying somebody else’s right to live. The right to life, whether it’s the life of an innocent murder victim or the life of an innocent unborn child, is the most precious of all rights. The death penalty, if nothing else, reinforces respect for that right to life.

Posted by colrus at April 5, 2003 02:12 AM | TrackBack