Abortion vs. Death Penalty

(The following was a letter I submitted that appeared in The Tidings, on February 14, 2003. It referred to this story.)

There are times when I really question a person’s viewpoint. There were three letters in the February 7, 2003 Tidings Readers Forum section that questions Sacramento Bishop William Weigand’s statement, aimed at Governor Davis, on the 30th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. He said, “As your bishop, I have to say clearly that anyone — politician or otherwise — who thinks it is acceptable for a Catholic to be pro-abortion is in very great error, puts his or her soul at risk, and is not in good standing with the church. Such a person should have the integrity to acknowledge this and choose of his own volition to abstain from receiving Holy Communion until he has a change of heart." The three letters ask why the same treatment isn’t given to pro-death penalty politicians.

There have been exactly 829 executions from 1976 until today. On average, there are over 3000 abortions performed every day in America. Over the same time period there have been about 40,000,000 innocent lives lost by abortion versus 829 executions of people whose crimes were so heinous that a jury of their peers gave them the death sentence. Let us have a sense of proportion.

I am against the death penalty, and I work to end the horrible practice. I would like to think that I fight at least 40,000 times harder to end abortion. I pray that the authors of the three letters do, too.