Back in my pro-war neocon days I considered myself pro-life. I’d debate the abortion issue with pro-choice friends and I’d often hear, “How can you say you’re pro-life when you’re in favor the death penalty and the war?” That questions always made me think about those issues, but I’d come up with some rationalization. I usually had a response like, “Well you’re pro-choice when it comes to killing a baby, but not pro-choice when it comes to funding schools, planned parenthood, and the welfare state. Besides, ‘pro-life’ strictly applies to abortion. They’re innocent children. The people getting the death penalty deserved it.”
I know it’s weak, but the term “pro-life” does refer to the issue of abortion. However, just this week I saw two separate Facebook posts saying that pro-lifers are hypocritical because they’re pro life while the baby is in the womb, but once it comes out they don’t care if the baby dies. It’s supposed to be a slam dunk argument in favor of government welfare.
I’m not a collectivist, I can’t speak for all pro lifers, but I can certainly clarify my stance. I’m generally against all force, coercion, or aggression against innocent people. going in the womb and killing a baby is clearly aggression against the baby. Now this may shock you, but I am also in favor of helping children who need it once they’re born!
That doesn’t mean I’m okay with government welfare. Government welfare is funded by taxes. taxes are taken by force with the threat of imprisonment or wage garnishment. Therefore, it is not inconsistent at all to be pro life and against government welfare. If government would just get out of the way we’d have a lot less poor people and would be able to help those who need it through the market.
For the record, if you don’t regularly read this blog or listen to our podcast, I’m no longer pro-war or anything close to neocon!
The question could be: Do I have a right to punish a person for making a choice with her body? Regardless of whether one thinks that killing a baby inside a womb is wrong or not, why is it right to punish (depriving of liberty) another person for doing something one does not like?
I think it is possible to be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time. “If I got pregnant unexpectedly, I would have the baby because I don’t like abortion” is different than “Anyone who aborts should be sent to jail”.
If anybody can do as they please, do I then think that murders and violent crime are OK? Not at all. What I do think is that prison, fines and other methods of punishment that the state uses don’t solve anything and make the situation worse. I think that negative reputation and ostracism would work much better than existing types of punishment. I would still advocate for prison only for extremely violent criminals, but for the purpose of protecting other people from them, not for the sake of revenge and punishing them.
I don’t understand why people say “justice” when they actually mean “revenge”.
Carlos, I think your comment is centered around imprisonment in general. Your third paragraph is really the crux of the matter, but it has little to do with the pro-life discussion. I agree with the bulk of it — most crimes are probably not best served by imprisonment, which have been known to harden criminals.
However your first two paragraphs seem to me to touch on the most common strawman of the pro-life argument.
> Do I have a right to punish a person for making a choice with her body? … why is it right to punish (depriving of liberty) another person for doing something one does not like?
I feel the need to clarify that the pro-life position is not that abortion is not simply “something one does not like.” It’s an disingenuous to word it that way as it is to say that mugging someone and shooting them is “something one does not like.”
> I think it is possible to be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time. “If I got pregnant unexpectedly, I would have the baby because I don’t like abortion” is different than “Anyone who aborts should be sent to jail”.
This is once again confusing the pro-life argument as simply “I don’t like abortion.” The analogy here would be if you had said “I think it is possible to be against robbery but for the choice to rob at the same time.” So in this way, no it is not possible to be pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-choice implies that you are allowing the option of abortion. I would agree with you that you could be pro-life and not in favor of imprisonment for offenders. But that’s simply because you may different ideas of how to punish. For example, you might think that some sort of forced therapy or counseling is in order. Or you may think that only the doctors providing the abortion should be imprisoned.