The Incoherent Witness of “Pro-Life” Death Penalty Maximalism

is summed up by this cartoon:

Yeah.  I get it.  The Courts are contradicting themselves.  But here’s the thing.  The *other* subtext of this cartoon is that the kid on the left *should* be put to death.    Cuz he is (how does Rush Limbaugh refer to such people?  Oh yeah, “human debris”).  So we have the spectacle of “prolifers” and Christians who profess to believe in the redemption of sinners clamoring to put minors to death lest anything less than the maximum number of people that can be killed, should be killed.  The typical reason given: they have “forfeited the right to life”.  In short, the right to life is not something innate to the human person by the  nature of what he is as a creature in the image of God.  It is a privilege granted by the state which the state should revoke as often as possible should the human person commit some offense we deem heinous enough.  Otherwise, it’s a “slippery slope”.  You have mercy on a kid and you run the risk of being merciful to somebody else.  Better play it safe and kill kids.   The burden is not on the state to show why somebody has “forfeited their right to life” but on the human person (and the Catholic Church) to show why someone should not be killed.

For some reason, even people empathetic to the prolife cause find this sort of “prolife” death penalty maximalism, eager to kill even kids so long as they have been born, ugly and alienating.