When They Say Abortion and Capital Punishment Are One and the Same

“One cannot help but wonder if this is little more than a tactic adopted by supporters of abortion to seek to discredit pro-life activists by implying that their entire worldview rests on a contradiction.”

On the morning of March 22nd, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that it would review a federal appeals court ruling from July of 2020 that vacated Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Writing for the Court last summer, First Circuit of Appeals Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson indicated that concerns about the jury’s impartiality and the potentially underexamined influence of Tsarnaev’s elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, on his younger brother’s actions warranted the original death sentence being overturned. The announcement at the time was greeted by praise in some quarters and criticism in others, with then-President Donald Trump reacting by writing, “Rarely has anybody deserved the death penalty more than the Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.” President Trump further stated plans for his Justice Department to challenge the First Circuit’s ruling: “The Federal Government must again seek the Death Penalty in a do-over of that chapter of the original trial. Our Country cannot let the appellate decision stand. Also, it is ridiculous that this process is taking so long!”

This ruling, along with President Trump’s comments, came just weeks after the federal government began conducting its first executions since 2003. (During President Trump’s tenure, a total of 13 federal executions were carried out.) Now, with the Supreme Court reviewing this case, much of the commentary that surfaced in response to the Trump administration’s resumption of the use of capital punishment will continue to come forward. This also, of course, comes at a time when President Joe Biden has expressed reservations about the use of capital punishment in the United States, marking another dramatic about-face for the President from a position held during his Senate days (and even as recently as 2019). To this point, also on March 22nd, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about Tsarnaev’s sentence by indicating the President’s “grave concerns” about the death penalty. (This could, very well, be interpreted as the Biden administration suggesting that regardless of a death sentence being reinstated, it will not be scheduling an execution date for Tsarnaev.)

In any event, debates regarding the moral permissibility of capital punishment remain a constant companion to news cycles such as these. And among the frequent arguments put forward against it—from concerns about alleged racial disparities to questions about its deterrent effects to unease about costs associated with appeals—there is one additional, common contention that, in my view, warrants particular pause and reconsideration. This refers to an argument that is routinely advanced by political commentators, religious figures, and journalists; in brief, it suggests that to be opposed to abortion yet also to support capital punishment is to be guilty of great duplicity—and that to hold such a position betrays a deep-seated insincerity in one’s advocacy on behalf of life.