Kristan Hawkins, the president of an American anti-abortion group, recently caused a reaction when she posted her opposition to the death penalty on X.
“The death penalty is inconsistent with a pro-life worldview,” wrote Hawkins who serves as president of Students for Life of America. Her post has been viewed over 2 million times.
She further clarified her position in an interview with CBN stating,
“Even if you feel that the death penalty is justified in some circumstances, I don’t think we should be gleeful about it. I don’t think we should be flippant about prescribing the death penalty because we have to ask ourselves what … has been the argument for the death penalty. It’s to protect society, right? It’s to say, ‘These people have done something so heinous they’re such a menace and danger to our society, that, in order to save our society, protect our children, we must put them to death.’”
I agree with Hawkins that we should never celebrate when a person is sentenced to death.
But I disagree when she states that support of the death penalty is inconsistent with a pro life world view.
Obviously, we must disagree on what a Christian pro life world view actually involves. She seems to suggest that the Old Testament, which supports the death penalty for first degree murder (Numbers 35:16-17), is inconsistent with a Christian world view.
So can a person who is anti abortion support the death penalty?
Not only do I.believe they can, but it’s necessary to be consistent.
It revolves around how much we value human life. Is life in the womb equally important as life outside the womb?
Over the years, I have noticed those supporting abortion often devalue the life inside the mother. They refer to it as a fetus, instead of a baby, or describe it as a clump of cells.
When you oppose the death penalty you are going down a similar path. You are devaluing the life of the victim who was brutally murdered.
Take the case of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s worst mass murderer. In 2011, he brutally shot 69 people, mostly children and young teenagers, attending a summer camp. Before he did that, he had set off a bomb in Oslo killing eight people.
He was sentenced to 21 years in jail.
So what is the value of each child’s life slaughtered by this callous murderer? Apparently just four months.
When we don’t hold firm to the value of life and support the death penalty for first degree murder, this is where we end up. It becomes a slippery slope as life inevitably becomes less and less valuable.
A classic example of this downward slide can be seen in Canada. The federal government has introduced government assisted suicide (MAID). Since it was deployed ten years ago, over 76,000 people have died through this program.
An article in Canada’s state run media, CBC, in 2017 pointed to a report stating that assisted suicide will save the country’s government-funded medical system millions of dollars each year.
Doctor-assisted death could reduce annual health-care spending across the country by between $34.7 million and $136.8 million, according to a report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday.
The savings exceedingly outweigh the estimated $1.5 to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with implementing medically assisted dying.
Finally, Hawkins also brought up Jesus’ words that we need to love our enemy (Matthew 5:44-45).
This seems to contradict the Old Testament Law of an eye for an eye. But we need to understand the critical difference between the Old and New Testament.
The Old Testament law provided the rules and regulations governing the nation of Israel. Jesus’ ministry was primarily directed at the individual.
While at a personal level, we need to forgive the individual who murdered a beloved family member, the government must still fulfill its role and uphold justice. In implementing the death penalty, it maintains the value of human life.
OpentheWord.org 
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