The Incoherent Witness of "Pro-Life" Death Penalty Maximalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"is summed up by this cartoon: Yeah.\u00a0 I get it.\u00a0 The Courts are contradicting themselves.\u00a0 But here's the thing.\u00a0 The *other* subtext of this cartoon is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/12\/the-incoherent-witness-of-pro-life-death-penalty-maximalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Incoherent Witness of "Pro-Life" Death Penalty Maximalism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"is summed up by this cartoon: Yeah.\u00a0 I get it.\u00a0 The Courts are contradicting themselves.\u00a0 But here's the thing.\u00a0 The *other* subtext of this cartoon is\" \/>\n<meta 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{"id":40292,"date":"2012-12-12T00:48:40","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T07:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=40292"},"modified":"2014-12-30T09:45:38","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T16:45:38","slug":"the-incoherent-witness-of-pro-life-death-penalty-maximalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/12\/the-incoherent-witness-of-pro-life-death-penalty-maximalism.html","title":{"rendered":"The Incoherent Witness of “Pro-Life” Death Penalty Maximalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

is summed up by this cartoon:<\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0 I get it.\u00a0 The Courts are contradicting themselves.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 The *other* subtext of this cartoon is that the kid on the left *should* be put to death.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cuz he is (how does Rush Limbaugh refer to such people?\u00a0 Oh yeah, \u201chuman debris\u201d).\u00a0 So we have the spectacle of \u201cprolifers\u201d and Christians who profess to believe in the redemption of sinners clamoring to put minors to death\u00a0lest anything less than the maximum number of people that can be killed, should be killed.\u00a0 The typical reason given: they have \u201cforfeited the right to life\u201d.\u00a0 In short, the right to life is not something innate to the human person by the\u00a0 nature of what he is as a creature in the image of God.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Otherwise, it\u2019s a \u201cslippery slope\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0 You have mercy on a kid and you run the risk of being merciful to somebody else.\u00a0 Better play it safe and kill kids.\u00a0\u00a0 The burden is not on the state to show why somebody has \u201cforfeited their right to life\u201d but on the human person (and the Catholic Church<\/a>) to show why someone should not be killed.<\/p>\n

For some reason, even people empathetic to the prolife cause find this sort of \u201cprolife\u201d death penalty maximalism, eager to kill even kids<\/em> so long as they have been born, ugly and alienating.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"