No Stupid Questions

Because it's not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.

It's about curtailing choice.

welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.

It's not about ethics, it never was. It's about CONTROL.

Makes more sense when you realise it isn't about life, but about punishing women for having sex.

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.

Because it's not about saving lives, it never has been. It's about control.

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.

It only sounds like a contradiction if you take "pro-life" literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.

Let me be clear, I'm about as firm a supporter of a woman's right to choose as they come. I'm also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?

However, the general position of "pro lifers" does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn't been born yet, and because it hasn't been born, it's completely innocent. So you have no right to take it's life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.

There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.

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.

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.

They don't actually care about life, they just don't want women to have control over their bodies.

Forced birthers don't actually care about "life". They care about violently controlling anybody who isn't a pale bro.

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 :)

My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.

They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.

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…

I think that can be explained, but tell me how someone can be in favor of the death penalty but be against assisted suicide.

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.

It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.

The death penalty doesn't control women.

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.

They're obsessed with punishment. A lot of them see unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for recreational sex.

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.