I take exception to Mohamed Jemmali’s commentary (“Respecting the Choice,” ODE, 5/21/09). I will say for the record that I am pro-choice and I share Jemmali’s sentiment about Obama’s inclusive nature and Bush’s divisive nature.
Having said that, Jemmali suggests that being anti-choice and pro-death penalty is inconsistent, and I could not disagree more. If you believe abortion is murder, that viewpoint is no more inconsistent than being anti-homicide and pro-death penalty. In fact, if one believes abortion is homicide, I fail to see how they could be for abortion being legal and homicide being illegal.
I am anti-homicide and pro-death penalty. One can easily make the point that abortion kills an innocent human while the death penalty gives justice to murderers and worse. With the death penalty, the person has been exhaustively tried, convicted, and sentenced. With homicide, one person is unilaterally deciding to end the life of the other with no proper trial or any form of justice. In short, the question regarding the death penalty is simply that if you criminally and intentionally take an innocent life, have you forfeited your own?
That is completely different from the question of whether the embryo is a living human being. Again, I am pro-choice. I just felt a need to make clear that abortion and the death penalty are fundamentally different issues and that people can be consistent in being anti-choice and pro-death penalty.
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Abortion, death penalty are completely different issues
Daily Emerald
May 25, 2009
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