Why Keeping Abortion and Banning the Death Penalty Makes Statistical Sense

How can a person oppose a ban on abortion and support a ban on the death penalty? While it doesn't make sense at first glance, if you really think about it, one can support one and not the other. Many innocent people have been convicted of serious crimes, who were later found innocent, and the death penalty only makes false convictions more dangerous. The debate surrounding abortion is usually centered around the argument, at what point does a fetus become a person? Pro-lifers usually argue that abortion is murder via the killing of an innocent being. But, like the death penalty is dangerous because it risks the lives of innocent people, banning abortion is dangerous because it risks desperate women turning to a dangerous abortion black market.

If you think about the death penalty and abortion topics on political grounds rather than religious ones, it is easier to understand why the death penalty should be banned while abortion should not.

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, in 2004-2005 there were 200,078 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. Of those rape victims a whopping 80% were under the age of 30. What does all this mean? That means that at least 160,062 women who were the victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault were within their childbearing years. When you combine these statistics with the fact that over half of all rapes go unreported, there seems to be a lot of women out there would could end up pregnant as a result of rape.

While the innocent life of an unborn child always seems to be at the forefront of the abortion debate, what we fail to truly address are those cases in which abortion isn't chosen because of some night when the condom broke during an alcohol provoked one-night stand. There are reasons besides for sexual irresponsibility that people turn to abortion.

Besides for those women who find themselves pregnant after being raped, there are also those whose lives are threatened by a pregnancy that they had planned to carry to term. What will happen if we tell these rape victims and women whose own life is in danger because of the fetus that there is nothing they can do, abortion is illegal?

We may just be staring down the barrel of a black market gun. For most things that are illegal , and even some things that are legal, there exists a black market. Drugs, plastic surgery, prostitution, all have black markets. There is sure to be some women out there who are desperate enough to turn to an abortion black market to terminate their pregnancy. And anyone who has heard a story about a botched black market plastic surgery knows the dangers of black market medical practices.

Allowing the death penalty to remain legal means relying on a subjective justice system to make sure that no innocent lives are lost.

There have been many widely publicized cases of individuals who have been imprisoned for several years for crimes that they were later determined not to have committed. Now certainly if our justice system can imprison innocent individuals it can also sentence innocent individuals to death.

They can, in fact, since 1973 120 individuals have been released from death row based on evidence of their innocence according to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights.

Many justify the death penalty under the assumption that it is cheaper to kill a man than to house him for the remainder of his life, but is this really true? Many inmates on death row will exhaust their opportunities for appeal, which utilizes public defenders, judges, juries, and many other justice system workers. So, are the appeals cheaper than the housing and meals? The financial facts surround the death penalty are actually quite surprising. Here are some of those financial facts:

The California death penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life.
Taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each of the state's executions. (L.A. Times, March 6, 2005)

In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration.
(Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).

In Indiana, the total costs of the death penalty exceed the complete costs of life without parole sentences by about 38%, assuming
that 20% of death sentences are overturned and reduced to life. (Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission, January 10, 2002).

The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the
costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).

Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in
prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each
execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).

In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at
the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).

So not only do we, as a country, risk killing innocent people, we also pay for the risk with hard earned tax dollars.

So while you may feel like a hypocrite supporting a ban on the death penalty but supporting legal abortion, there is more to consider than just what meets the eye. The alternative to abortion is dangerous, and the death penalty is dangerous itself. It is one thing to follow your own beliefs in your own life, it is another to hold a whole country to those beliefs. When you start to hold such a large group of people, especially when that group of people are often described as a "melting pot" because of the vast differences in that group of people, it becomes harder and harder to truly hold those people to beliefs that they don't necessary subscribe to.

Sources:
http://www.rainn.org/statistics/
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ (Death Penalty Fact Sheet)