Let me make this perfectly clear.  I am opposed to the death penalty.  I am today, I have been as long as I can recall, and I am confident that I will be as long as I live on this earth.  I am because I know that every life is precious.  I am because there are other methods that the government can use to punish for capital crimes.  I am because there will not be a time that the government will not make mistakes in executing an innocent person.  The government will inevitably execute an innocent person.  I know this because GOD’S SON—JESUS the CHRIST was executed unjustly by man.  Granted it had to happen, granted it was GOD’S perfect plan.  But, the government still executed a perfect, innocent man.


That said, I want to comment on a column written by national columnist Leonard Pitts and published in the Peoria Journal Star on 12/2/05, page A4.  He writes, “Moral courage would require us to look the thing straight on, to acknowledge how flawed and capricious is this custom of killing people we judge guilty of crime.”  Leonard Pitts is opposed to capital punishment.  So am I.  Leonard Pitts supports the murder of unborn babies by their mothers.  I do not and, the LORD willing, never will.  The libertines who support the murder of unborn babies tend to oppose capital punishment.  They also tend to cry “hypocrite” when people who oppose the murder of unborn babies also support the execution of criminals convicted for government imposed capital crimes.  However, aren’t they just as hypocritical?  In fact, I would argue that the libertines are even more hypocritical than are those who are pro-life and yet support capital punishment.  
  
Here are some of the differences between capital punishment and the murder of the unborn.  Every person who has been executed by the government has been accused of a crime.  Every person has had a public trial.  Every person has had the opportunity to have a lawyer represent him in open court.  After the conviction, every person has had a punishment phase of the public trial process.  Every person, who has been convicted, has had the opportunity to appeal that conviction.  Every person, who has been convicted, has had a time period between conviction and the actual execution.  This time period in some cases has been for years.  As Leonard Pitts has pointed out in the article, the total number of executions since they have resumed is at one thousand total executions.


In the murder of the unborn, there is no accusation of a crime.  There is no public trial.  There is no opportunity to allow the victim to be represented by counsel in a public court.  There is no punishment phase to the proceedings because there have been no proceedings.  There is never an appeal by the victim.  There is no real time before the execution because none of the previous mentioned procedures are ever required.  By definition, any wait will not be for more than about nine months.

In the murder of the unborn, all parties involved are not required to be involved in the process.  The victim never has a voice in the proceedings.  The father is not required to be involved in the proceeding and in fact the mother has absolute veto power over the desires of the father who is as equally involved in the creation of that life as is the mother.  The doctor has no medical say in the matter if the mother desires to murder the unborn child.  She can walk into a Planned Murderhood Clinic, demand a murder, and receive it as requested.  The murder has been sanctioned before hand by an unconstitutional decision of an unelected, small body of appointed members who made a murderous decision for the entire nation.  Since the murder of the unborn has been allowed by Supreme Court fiat thirty two plus years ago between 32-45 million unborn babies have been murdered.  Many more unborn babies have been murdered in any one month than the combined total of capital punishment executions since they have resumed.


So, my questions are: “Where is the admission of error by the libertines in the calculated, government sanctioned murder of our unborn?”  “Where is the moral courage to repent from the murder of so many unborn children?”  “Where is the acknowledgement of how flawed and capricious the murder of innocent, unborn children is?”  “Where is the outrage over the murder of so many innocent victims of a murderous Supreme Court and their cohorts?”  “Where is the real hypocrisy?”