To compare the actions of a state government in punishment of a criminal who has taken human life and to protect society from them doing it again, to murdering a baby in its mother’s womb is beyond all logic.
Whether you agree with capital punishment or not; for a state to execute a psychopathic killer is not because they do not value human life, it is because they DO value human life and are taking steps to prevent this killer from killing again.
Again, I am amazed at the attempts to justify the unjustifiable by those wanting to eliminate the inconvenience of a new baby.
Not if you understand why the Catholic Church, and many other Christian groups, object to abortion. It has nothing to do with the innocence of the baby involved.
Remember, the Catholic Church and other Western Christians in general do not believe that any human being since the Fall is innocent, and that includes the unborn. We are all fallen. By the same token, we are all offered Salvation, and Christ died for all - infants, adults, saints and murderers. None of us deserves life; we are all given it as a gift of God’s grace. This is pretty basic to the Church’s understanding.
How does this apply to abortion, murder, killing, etc? Well, the Church does not allow us to kill another person except in very unusual circumstances. In a real case of self-defense lethal force may be justified, although not if lesser force would suffice. War is the other situation, and I would say too big a discussion and too much off topic to get into here, especially since there seems to be a lot more disagreement about it.
The Church does not allow killing for convenience, for monetary gain, for revenge, for punishment, for guilt, to prevent something that hasn’t happened yet. So the Church does not support abortion (some other Christian groups and most legal systems allow it when the mother’s life is really in danger,) it doesn’t support the death penalty, and it doesn’t support killing to protect property alone. This is quite consistent with the idea that human life is all the gift of God, and something we do not have the right to mess with.
I do not know why the pro-life movement is constantly talking about innocents being killed, because that is not really the point. I suppose it has a wider appeal, although it reminds me a bit of Greenpeace’s use of the baby seals to raise money because they are cute. It also allows people to feel comfortable supporting the death penalty while objecting to abortion.
I think it is a big mistake to attach a cause motivated by the Church’s profound respect for life to something which is immaterial to it, because it confuses people. If someone thinks that is the real reason, it will allow that “culture of death” people talk about to continue because they haven’t really understood the meaning of life.
In that scenario, I think any gains made in the US on the abortion front are likely to be short-lived. They will always be undercut when society sees human life as less important than property, or thinks that the value of life depends on innocence and guilt, or even that other types of life have no intrinsic value. A much more comprehensive approach is required.
