Is that so?

Speaking off the cuff, Pope Leo apparently said, "Someone who says, 'I’m against abortion,' but says, 'I’m in favor of the death penalty,' is not really pro-life."  That is the current view of things in a church body in which the previous pope changed the catechism in order to enshrine his position on the death penalty and those of his persuasion.  For clarity, I am not in favor of any death but I find it curious that people seem to interweave the death penalty with abortion so easily.  There is the problem of Scripture and its allowance for the death penalty.  If I read correctly, Pius XII defended the death penalty as recently as 1953, and then not merely in terms of its legitimacy but also by virtue of its necessity in the cause of justice.  A little doctrinal improvisation, as it were, from Pope Francis that now seems to have become rather normative?  Oh, well, skip the theology of it all for a moment; there is also something more.

According to an internet search, some 34 people have been executed in the US so far this year, up from 23 in the year prior.  In the world, as far as you can trust such statistics, the total executed was 1,518 (according to Amnesty International).  So compare the scope of the two.  To be against the death penalty is to touch the lives of three dozen or less in the US and about 1,500 in the world but abortion, in all its forms, is a number almost impossible to conceive.  The Guttmacher Institute says that in 2024 there were 1,038,100 clinician-provided abortions in US states.  That number can include only a raw estimate of the number of abortion pill abortions since it is impossible to calculate that accurately except by prescription given or pill purchased.  So correlate the numbers side by side.  You do the math.  It is not hard.

I would go so far as to say that anyone who is anti-death penalty but pro-choice with respect to abortion is not pro-life in any sense of the term but it is possible to see how someone can accept the right of the government in the pursuit of justice to issue a death penalty and be anti-abortion in all its forms and be therefore fully pro-life.  This is not about proving who is better or worse on the sacredness of life but about the very different contexts and numbers.  We have witnessed the death penalty cases in the US and around the world consistently decline while the abortion numbers have gone up (and in the US even after Roe was overturned!).  I find it inconceivable (yes, I know what that word means) to make this comparison of the two stands as if the two were even remotely related or relatable.  Pardon me, but it is naive to lecture the world about the meaning of "pro-life" when you are not comparing the same things -- either in scale or in justice.  The unborn have done nothing to deserve their death but every system of law presumes in some shape or another an eye for an eye.  

So, Pope Leo, stop making a mockery of Cardinal Bernadin's seamless tapestry of life.  Bernadin, responding to Gov. Mario Cuomo's defense of his tolerance for abortion, coined that expression (drawn from John 19:23) as a way of illustrating the coherence of Roman Catholic moral teaching on the sanctity of human life. It was meant to underscore that a “consistent ethic of life” requires attention to a spectrum of issues but was not meant to equate them as being equal in significance or impact.  Yes, I get that.  You must consider not just the obvious offenses against life such as abortion and euthanasia, but also unjust war, capital punishment, human trafficking, the plight of the poor, exploitation of workers, and a host of other things.  We all know that.  You cannot be pro-life if the only life you protect is the unborn.  But neither is advocacy for the few who are executed in the pursuit of justice with the countless many who are routinely and daily murdered in the womb.  We must be consistent but we also need to be real.  Capital punishment and abortion are most certainly not the same nor even in the same league.