Is it Hypocritical to be Pro-Life and Support the Death Penalty?

Last week, I got myself entangled in a Twitter discussion stemming from a post about Donald Trump rushing to execute death row inmates before his term is up. I wasn’t so much interested in the original post but rather the tweet below it. A lady said: “I’ve never understood how people can claim to be pro life but also pro death penalty. It’s like they only care about a life before birth after that everyone is SOL.”

In response I said: “Big difference between the two—the unborn are innocent victims that never got a chance to live; murderers have taken the lives of innocent victims, of which the death penalty is their just due, unlike the unjust death penalty given to the unborn.”

I figured that should clear things up. But it just stirred up the nay-sayers and fallacy flingers (but it did get 45 hearts!). And then she responded back with, “There have been innocent people on death row. What about them?”

Do you see what she did?

She tripped over the fallacy of false equivalence. False equivalence is an argument or claim in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. The confusion is often due to one shared characteristic between two or more items of comparison in the argument that is way off in the order of magnitude, oversimplified, or just that important additional factors have been ignored.

Though I alluded to the distinction in my initial response, my debating partner, and many others who attempted to gang up on me, were focused on the issue of innocent people on death row being wrongfully executed. While there is no data to substantiate that claim,[1] they see capital punishment as unjust and should be banned. Since 1973, 173 death-row inmates have been exonerated of all charges.[2] My combatants have put pro-life and the death penalty on the same playing field. I will go back to this issue in a minute. But I want to discuss another comment from a different lady.

She said: “He’s [referring to me] a pastor, so the hypocrisy is just built in.” Pretty nice comment, don’t you think? This lady is committing an ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem is when one attacks the person making an argument, instead of the argument itself. And there are various forms of it. The one in this case is a circumstantial ad hominem whereby the “attacker” suggests the person is biased or predisposed to a particular stance. So, as we see, this lady said that me being a pastor predisposes me to hypocrisy—its “built in”!

But what is the definition of hypocrisy? The Oxford Lexico Dictionary defines it as the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform. Wikipedia offers this definition: Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.

Here was my response to her: “Hypocrisy is to say you don’t do X but then you do X, as in I believe abortion is wrong, but I support abortion. Abortion is unjust; execution of a murderer is just. I am anti-abortion because I am pro-life; I am for executing murderers because I am pro-life of their victims.”

She thought my definition was “very rigid and narrow.” Now, I should have made it clearer for logic’s sake. I should have said, “I am for executing murderers because I am pro-justice for their victims.”

Getting back to the first tweeter. Here is more from our exchange:

My response: “That’s not the issue [her claim about innocent people on death row]. The death penalty is justice for convicted murderers. The unborn are innocent victims—always.”

Her response: “It’s an issue for me if a person is murdered by the government for something they didn’t do. How would you feel if it was someone you cared about?”

My response: “It should be a greater concern for those who are truly innocent—victims of murder. We have laws in place to punish evil doers; is it a perfect system, no. But we cannot do away with justice” [Now, this probably wasn’t the best response, but when bullets are flying by, sometimes things get messy].

Her response: “So you’re ok with a few truly innocent of the crime they’ve been sentenced with people being put to death by the government because they’re just “collateral damage” of an imperfect system?”

We ended up getting to a charitable ending. But do you see how her argument is misplaced? The shared characteristic between the two (abortion and the death penalty) is the death of an innocent person. Victims of abortion are always innocent; the death penalty has the potential for an innocent person to be killed.

Her claim is that the death penalty is wrong because innocent people on death row have been put to death (Now, as stated, we do not have clear evidence of such incidents. But I will say I am sure such tragedies have occurred.). And because of that possibility and because there have been 173 people falsely accused and sentenced to death row, the death penalty should be removed. Instead of demanding that the legal system enacts stricter measures, improved processes, and greater over site of the legal proceedings for death penalty cases, and then accountability for those who violate protocol, she would rather get rid of the death penalty, because of the potential injustices of executing innocent prisoners, which guarantees no justice for murdered victims.

Let’s wrap this up. I want to answer the question and title of this post: Is it Hypocritical to be Pro-Life and Support the Death Penalty?

As we can see, the conflation of the two views is a fallacious move. One can hold to the view that innocent human life, as all babies in the womb are, should not be aborted, and one can also affirm the death penalty, which is the just sentence of execution of a convicted murderer. So, it is not hypocritical to be pro-life and support the death penalty. It would be hypocritical to not support the killing of innocent babies in the womb but support the execution of prisoners found innocent of their crimes.

A passage of Scripture was illuminating on this issue, providing a foundation to support my conclusion. In the book of Romans, Paul writes, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good” (12:9). Hypocritical love sees the injustice of a death-row inmate being executed for a crime he did not commit, but not seeing the injustice of aborting an innocent baby in the womb. Paul says to detest evil; evil is supporting the killing of innocent people, in utero or on death row. Paul says cling to what is good; justice for murdered victims is good. In Genesis 9:5–6, God commands, “if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.”

God demands we live by his just ways. Injustice reigns when we do not follow God’s Word. But even then, the wicked do prosper. We see it all over the world. But we can trust God because vengeance belongs to him (Romans 12:19). And we are thankful for his grace, in that we all deserve death for our sins. For Christ took our punishment, so that we could be redeemed. And that is the beauty of the gospel; a murderer can receive grace and mercy, though he still has to face the earthly consequences for his crime. And a woman who aborts her innocent child, can receive grace and mercy, but she will have to live with the burden and possible consequences (maybe not able to bear children). Romans 5:20–21 says:

Where sin multiplies, grace multiplied even more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Praise be to God that we have his Word to guide us in a fallen world.

~ Romans 11:36

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[1] However, there are no death-penalty cases where the executed prisoner was later found innocent. The data can only confirm “possibly” innocent. See, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/executed-but-possibly-innocent.
[2] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence.

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