Ask Auntie Pinko
January 24, 2002

Dear Auntie Pinko,

How can conservatives who call themselves "pro-life" support the death penalty?

Emily,
Goshen, NY

Dear Emily,

Auntie Pinko, too, has been trying to get an answer to that question over the past twenty-five years. At one point, when I was much younger and considerably more na�ve, I was volunteering for a citizens' group that was opposing the passage of a law that would institute the death penalty in my home state. A hearing was planned, and we were trying to round up large numbers of citizens to attend the hearing and show their opposition to the law.

Auntie Pinko went through a directory of citizens' organizations, looking for those who might join with us at that hearing. And lo and behold, one of the organizations was called "Citizens Concerned for Life!" Although I knew that their major concern was to outlaw abortion, I assumed that a "concern for life" included the lives of adult humans as well as those of fetuses. I sure learned my lesson that day! They sent me off with a flea in my ear, and some of their members actually turned up at the hearing in support of the law.

Now, I have since learned that a blanket generalization on this issue is unfair. I have met many "pro-life" conservatives who do, indeed, actively oppose executions. And I have also met many liberals who oppose executions but attach no moral odium to abortion. Humans are an idiosyncratic, inconsistent lot at best. Endowed by evolution, or Divinity if you prefer, with the most advanced cognitive apparatus in the animal kingdom, we show endless facility in using it to create rationalizations for things that are fundamentally irrational.

And-let's face it-the death penalty is an essentially irrational response to the serious problem of violent, extreme criminal acts. No research has ever been able to document any broad-based or long-term deterrent effect-the restoration of states' option to exercise the death penalty in the 1970s has certainly not produced any widespread reduction in brutal murders, multiple homicides, etc. Nor is there any intrinsic logic to the notion that permitting the state to kill people who kill people is an effective way to convey the general social value that killing people is morally wrong.

So perhaps it is a mistake to try and frame these public debates in factual, logical, rational terms at all. It is more honest, and possibly even more compelling, to acknowledge that the real reasons for our positions are emotional, not logical. (Yes, even the religious ones-Auntie Pinko, in spite of a lifelong deep commitment to the Christian faith, would be the first to admit that no religion stands up to the rigorous standards of objective factual logic-but so what? Ideas and feelings have always had more power in human events than mere facts.)

By their own notions of which human lives have value, the conservatives who oppose abortion but condone the death penalty are acting consistently in accordance with their beliefs. They believe that it is possible to "forfeit" one's "right" to life, based on one's actions. Fetuses, not being capable of action, therefore by definition as a class automatically have a higher value than mature individuals who are judged by our efficient, effective, incontrovertibly unbiased judicial system to have "forfeited" that right.

Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko!

View Auntie's Archive

Do you have a question for Auntie Pinko?

Do political discussions discombobulate you? Are you a liberal at a loss for words when those darned dittoheads babble their endless rhetoric at you? Or are you a conservative who just can't understand those pesky liberals and their silliness? Auntie Pinko has an answer for everything! So ask away!