You’re hard to figure out...I mean, you’re pro-life, yet – [clip showing debate where Brian Williams says to Rick Perry: “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times” and gets vigorous applause]. What was that? You’re afraid of death panels. Yet for uninsured coma patients – [clip of Wolf Blitzer asking “Are you saying society should just let him die?” and audience response of some people yelling “yeah!”]...It’s like the Republican base is at war with its own talking points.
E.J. Dionne Jr., Only conservatives can end the death penalty, Washington Post online editorial
A survey last year...showed that if a variety of alternatives were offered (including life without parole plus restitution to victims’ families), respondents’ hard support for the death penalty was driven down to 33 percent. If a majority is open to persuasion, the best persuaders will be conservatives, particularly religious conservatives and abortion opponents, who have moral objections to the state-sanctioned taking of life... Despite the cheering for executions at a recent GOP debate, there are still conservatives who are standing up against the death penalty. In Ohio this summer, state Rep. Terry Blair, a Republican and a staunch foe of abortion, declared flatly: ‘I don’t think we have any business in taking another person’s life, even for what we call a legal purpose or what we might refer to as a justified purpose.’...Political ideology has built a thick wall that blocks us from acknowledging that some of the choices we face are tragic. Perhaps we can make an exception in this case and have a quiet conversation about whether our death-penalty system really speaks for our best selves. And I thank those conservatives, right-to-lifers, libertarians and prison officials who, more than anyone else, might make such a dialogue possible.
Daniel Berrigan, 2007, Signing an online petition in opposition to Amnesty International’s move to endorse abortion as a “right”
My moral conviction on abortion and the rights of the unborn are more serious than 'a point of view'...It's as close to my conscience as war and the death penalty.
Mother Teresa
Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants.
Stephen Zunes, Consistently Opposing Killing, p, 183
Using nonviolence to overthrow dictatorships and establish democracy appears to impact popular attitudes towards violence overall. In virtually every country with a successful nonviolent insurrection against an autocratic regime, the new democratic government has abolished the death penalty, dramatically reduced military spending and passed stronger environmental laws. In former dictatorships where minority groups were legally discriminated against, such laws were overturned. Some of these new democracies have imposed greater restrictions on abortion, while virtually none have liberalized abortion laws.
Dennis DiMauro, Lutherans for Life, Devotional for Day 23 of 40 Days for Life, October 20, 2011
God doesn’t value people and things like we do. Jonah loved a shade tree more than an entire city of sinful people. We love our dogs more than a terrorist. We love our cars more than a beggar on the side of the road. And sometimes, we love our money more than a child growing in a desperate teenager’s womb. But God isn’t like us...And the book of Jonah tells us that He loves even the most sinful people and seeks to bring them into His merciful arms. And it’s a love that seeks to touch all of his created children: that desperate teenager, the baby growing in her womb, even tyrants and terrorists.
Terri Herring, discussing the Nov. 8 Mississippi “personhood amendment” ballot measure
In Mississippi, we have the opportunity to lead the way on a social justice issue. We may have been behind on civil rights, but we can be ahead on human rights, and that's what personhood is really all about.
Charles J. Chaput, Being Human in an Age of Unbelief, November 8, 2011
The pro-life movement needs to be understood and respected for what it is: part of a much larger, consistent, and morally worthy vision of the dignity of the human person. You don’t need to be Christian or even religious to be “pro-life.” Common sense alone is enough to make a reasonable person uneasy about what actually happens in an abortion. The natural reaction, the sane and healthy response, is repugnance.
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, “Abortion and War,” Center for Christian Nonviolence
As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day—‘U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air’—and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them. The lucky ones were the ones who took a direct hit. The ones, who were aborted because of percussion, vibration or because of the terror, trauma, malnourishment and/or exhaustion visited upon their mothers by war, would probably have suffered less agonizing deaths at the wrong end of a suction machine in an abortion clinic.
Robert Arner, Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity
In this study, I have traced the ethic of the pre-Constantinian church through a series of individual moral issues related to the taking of human life, and have found that, without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever. Neither homicide, nor feticide, nor infanticide, nor suicide, nor capital punishment, nor killing in war were considered acceptable to a church fiercely committed to following the teaching and moral example of the incarnate Lord.
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