Your political opinions on abortion and capital punishment

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taking an innocent life
taking the life of a person who has killed others - different

though i still oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it is inefficient

minerv: Are you against killing flies?

Some crimes are worthy of being punished by death.

abortion is none of the government's business. It should neither prohibit or finance abortions. If women do not wish to bear children they can use birth control or abstain. If men do not wish to father children they can use birth control or abstain.

ruveyn

The pursuit of justice is not a war, you're only calling it a war to justify the murder of innocent people by the government with the "casualties" handwave. Capital punishment is not necessary, and the "friendly fire" isn't friendly because it doesn't have to happen. What's happening is, if it is acceptable to you that innocent people get killed by flawed pursuit of justice, is that actual justice is less important to you than the appearance of justice.

There is a state of war between those who respect life and property and those who don't. Thieves are parasites and those who do violence for no justifiable reason are enemies of the human race. Wrong doing should not be forgiven or tolerated. What should not do is provide incentives for people to do wrong. Proper behavior should be rewarded. Bad behavior should be punished, and severely, if necessary. The war between evil and not evil has being going on since the human race emerged from it biological ancestors.

ruveyn

The unborn have done nothing deserving of capital punishment.

Yes. And the women is no slave that she has to bear what is within here if she can get rid of it (if she wants to). Besides deserving and not-deserving are attributes of persons and fetuses are not persons.

ruveyn

How many times do I have to say this?

Death penalty is a domestic security issue and last time I checked the government's two most basic roles are domestic and national security. So therefore, it doesn't overstep its own role. Get that through your thick skull already.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 30 Jul 2011, 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

I disagree with you on this matter. The unborn are still human life even if they are not by some definition "persons" yet, and they are human life which has not committed any crimes. People who have been born though have the ability to act and commit actions, such as murder or rape, which ought to be deserving of a death penalty both in terms of retribution and prevention of their future continuance in such actions.

I suppose I'm pro-life, but not necessarily in a political sense. I don't personally agree with abortion, for quite a few different reasons, but I wouldn't impose my views on others or call for laws against it. My general feeling is that it's not my business what other women do with their bodies. However I do find distressing the number of foetuses terminated because of their sex, or disabilites and so on. And I would prefer a lower limit for abortion, 24 weeks is too high, except obviously in the case of a woman's life being in danger.

I'm anti death-penalty. Because the state is often incompetent, and because I don't think it should kill its own citizens.

That fly [according to one culture stream] may be your great grandmother. Who has a better right to bite you.

You have noticed, have you not, that most human beings - including the conceived but as yet unborn, are not flies? Nor lizards, nor mice.

A spade is a spade.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

A crapper by any other name would smell as sweet

Kitchener is very like Berlin, just a mite older.

Tell it like it is.

Killing a human is killing a human

Melanie's baby in the womb is just as human as Grampa with Alzheimer's.

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Humans always have killed humans, voluntarily or involuntarily, with regret or with glee.

Humans always will kill humans, voluntarily or involuntarily, with regret or with glee.

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Decide who you want to kill - include me if you like - and why you want or need to kill them [plural not as indefinite, but because no culture kills just one] and go to it.

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Just don't ask me to do it for you and acknowledge it for what it is instead of making up fairy stories like Johnny isn't human yet or Gorm is a monster.

I'm pro life and anti death penalty. I don't think people have the right to take lives, as we've never given lives.

She is not a slave. She's the caretaker of the fetus. Apart from rape, she put it in there herself, and it's her responsibility to care for it. If she is raped, she can put the baby up for adoption if she must. Just because a crappy thing happened to her doesn't give her the right to kill a human.
And if abortion is such a good idea, why do women often feel guilty and need to go to therapy after? Sounds like a natural warning that it's not good.

If deserving and not deserving are attributes of persons exclusively, are you saying that it wouldn't matter if we tortured animals or not? They're definitely not persons. So they don't deserve anything, maybe.
Fetuses are persons, anyways. What separates them from persons? Give me a list of anything you think could be used to distinguish them from persons.
what comes to mind for me is their mental development, consciousness, and size/age. Really, is that a justifiable difference? Do you think the extermination of ret*ds or people in comas is acceptable? When does a size or age determine a person's humanity? Where is the line drawn between a fetus and an infant? Is it as soon as the baby comes out? Partial birth abortions are where the baby is dissembled just before it is fully out. Do you think this is right?
They have the same DNA as people. I don't see the difference.

I'm anti-abortion (apart from in extreme circumstances) and anti-death penalty.

It you were truly anti-abortion you would make no exceptions.

ruveyn

This.

I have a very hard time seeing a foetus in the early stages of pregnancy as a human life. Maybe that's another thing wrong with me and the way I see the world, but meh.

I'm very distrustful of the legal system and very anti-death penalty. I see it as a form of state terrorism and also not that far removed from human sacrifice (which is one of my special interests).

What I find interesting is that people focus on the (im)morality of the person on death row and whether or not they 'deserve' to live. My focus more on the morality of the state and why exactly it wants to kill people. My suspicion is that states with capital punishment kill people for the same reason that states have always killed people - to control people through terror, except it doesn't work. If it was still acceptable to make executions into the public theatre that they used to be, then we'd still have public executions.

It's pretty much the same impulse as human sacrifice. Religions used human sacrifice to terrorise people; it was an assertion of the power of the clergy and by extension the power of the terrible gods they had created. In states where religion was part of the government (or tribe, really), state/tribal and religious terror went hand in hand.

Humans have a fascination with death, anyway - they just don't like to admit it. Human sacrifice/capital punishment also seems like a manifestation of collective Thanatos (death drive) to me. We have to put on a moral veneer of punishing criminals/bad guys as a way of satisfying our hypocrisy over the fact that we like killing people/animals. I want humanity to admit its fascination with death and come to terms with it, rather than repressing it and releasing it in such a horrible way as capital punishment/human sacrifice.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 30 Jul 2011, 11:14 am, edited 4 times in total.