The Death Penalty vs. Abortion

From NJ Voices

Corzine and the Sanctity of Life

Posted by Murray Sabrin December 18, 2007 8:47AM

Yesterday, Governor Corzine proudly signed legislation abolishing the death penalty. I applaud the governor's commitment to end the death penalty in New Jersey, because I now oppose the death penalty after supporting it all my adult life.

In Governor Corzine's remarks at the state capitol he said, "I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes." Truer words were never spoken. Yet, the governor has a blind spot, or more accurately a black hole, when it comes to another issue about the sanctity of life: abortion.

On a website, "Jon Corzine on the issues," several quotes appear from his public statements about abortion including one made during his 2000 campaign for the United States Senate: "I am passionately pro-choice, and I would be one of the U.S. Senate's most vocal and tenacious leaders in protecting a woman's right to choose. I oppose legislation banning so-called late-term abortions, because anti-choice extremists are using such legislation to chip away at Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guarantees a woman's vital constitutional right to choose. I trust the women of America to make their own health decisions without the intrusion of government."

I too was a passionate defender of a woman's right to choose even though I disagreed with the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision as an unwarranted intrusion in the right of states to decide this or any issue that should be the prerogative of state legislatures. That is the hallmark of federalism, one of America's founding principles.

When I learned about partial abortion from a student of mine in the mid 1990s I was appalled that this procedure could be legal in America or for that matter in any civilized society. Even Democrats such as former New York City mayor Ed Koch and the late New York U. S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called partial birth abortion infanticide. Crushing a baby's head and then sucking out its brains is morally repugnant, and yet the pro-choice extremists do not have the courage to condemn this procedure.

After reading Rep. Ron Paul's defense of the pro-life position from a limited government perspective in his 100 page book, Challenge to Liberty: Coming to Grip with the Abortion Issue, I too became an advocate of protecting the lives of the unborn.

Meanwhile, Governor Corzine can speak eloquently about the sanctity of life when he signs a law abolishing the death penalty, but he denies the unborn the right to their lives. Women carrying an unborn child never say they are having a fetus, they always say I am having a baby.

Abortion is the taking of a human life, a very special life that is being developed inside a woman's womb. After birth an infant develops outside the womb under the guidance of his or her parent(s). Does anyone believe a woman can choose to end the life of an infant because she has an unlimited "right to choose?"

Governor Corzine is intellectually inconsistent and philosophically obtuse, when it comes to the abortion issue. If the life of a killer can be spared by the state for committing a heinous crime, then surely the life of the unborn should be protected by the state. In short, if the "sanctity of life" has any meaning, it means that no life can be taken by the state or anyone else. After all, the role of the state is to prevent aggression against innocent human life, including life in the womb. Otherwise, we do we need a state?


My Commentary

Posted by Zemack on 12/18/07 at 2:21PM
In Governor Corzine's remarks at the state capitol he said, "I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes." Truer words were never spoken.

I couldn't disagree more.

The death penalty issue is primarily a moral one, and it boils down to one question... does human life have value, or doesn't it? If it does, then that which destroys it is evil and thus has no value. The act of committing cold-blooded murder (the taking of another's life in the absence of extenuating circumstances) is the ultimate violation of one's most fundamental right...the right to life. By taking the life of another human being, the cold-blooded killer thus forfeits the right to his own life.

Remember that we are speaking here of the most heinous type of crime...the rape-murder of a child, the gunning down of a store clerk during a robbery, the assassination of a police officer. To speak of "the sanctity of life", or of "love" or "compassion" (as Sister Helen Prejean was quoted today as saying) for life's destroyers is to make a mockery of those terms and to devalue the lives of all of us.

One can not value man's life and the destroyer of man's life at the same time. To the extent that one assigns value to the destroyer of man's life, then to the same extent he is devalueing man's life. There is no way out of this lethal contradiction. Not if one's standard of value is man's life.

The death penalty is justified, morally justified, not because of hatred or revenge. Nor is it justified on the grounds of deterence. The ruling principle in favor of the death penalty is justice. The ultimate crime must be met by the ultimate punishment. Death to cold-blooded murderers, the destroyers of life, is the ultimate affirmation of "the sanctity (and value) of life."

Sadly, by abolishing the death penalty, our great state of New Jersey has chosen to devalue life.