Q&A: Pro-life and pro-death penalty?

Time for a little Q&A. This question comes from folks whom are pro-choice (on the abortion issue, of course) and who view my being pro-life and pro-death penalty as being a contradiction. Here is what they view as the contradiction: They think that if I say that all life is sacred, then that should include the lives of criminals.

And indeed it does. But understand that we ARE talking about two different groups of people! The unborn are innocent and not guilty of any crime whatsoever, unless you call their "inconvenient existence" for their mothers a crime. Someone on death row, however, has been tried and judged. Unlike the unborn, the criminals on death row have had their day in court.

Understand that I do view the lives of those on death row as sacred, but they chose to waste their lives by committing crimes so heinous that the only justice that can be delivered for their victims is by death. We are talking here about serial murderers and the like. Now please tell me that a serial murderer is on par morally with an unborn child committing the "crime" of "an inconvenient existence"! And yet, the serial murderer gets more of a chance to appeal their death sentence than does the unborn.

What has always bugged me about pro-choice liberals is that they can always find it in their hearts to find sympathy for convicted criminals, but none at all for the unborn. I find that a contradiction that I'd LOVE to hear an explanation on how they can think in such a way, and also how they can justify it. After all, if I can be called hard-hearted for having no sympathy for the execution of a serial murderer, how much more hard-hearted does a pro-choicer have to be to have no sympathy for the unborn who are executed in the womb?

And while we're at it, let me go ahead an address a question that is often posed to me: Is there an abortion that I WOULD support? The answer is yes. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, the unborn has no chance of survival while the danger to the mother's life is great. Thus, there is no reason to put the mother through such danger for an unborn that has no chance for survival. Now I pose a question right back for you pro-choicers: Is there an abortion that you would totally oppose?

So in summary, I can be both pro-life and pro-death penalty, because comparing those two issues is comparing apples and oranges. If someone wants to try to link the two to expose an alleged conflict in my thinking, then they would have to justify that same conflict in reverse.

As for the recent efforts of exoneration of inmates on death row via DNA sampling, then I say bring it on. Justice is justice, and fair is fair. If DNA evidence exonerates an innocent on death row, then more power to those who go to the effort of exonerating them. There is no conflict in this for me, because we are still talking about justice. Even I admit that the justice system can fail, but I still stand by my support of the death penalty.