SPEW debate

[astronomychica.livejournal.com]

Okay, sorry guys, busy week with school, for fun, let's have a little debate.

How do you feel about the topics of capital punishment and abortions?

not a member? 
That's okay, 
respond with:
<b>name/username</b>
<b>House</b>
<b>what do you want to bring to the SPEW community?</b>
<b>what do you want changed for SPEW?</b>
<b>any contest ideas?</b>

Comments

[tsukinofaerii.livejournal.com]

Abortion: I can't say for certain that a fetus IS a person in the sense we think of "person". (Emotions, ability to reason, etc.) The closest we can say for sure is that it's a potential person. As far as I'm considered, "potential" isn't enough to remove the right of women to control their bodies.

Capital Punishment: This one is kind of fluid for me, but I recent settled on a side. I used to think, "There's definitely some people who have commited terrible crimes and, given the chance, would do it again. The best way to make sure they don't get that chance is to kill them." Then I thought about it a bit more and came up with, "What about people who are falsely imprisoned?" That sat me on the fence for a long time. After a bit of research, I found out that the death penalty was originally created for people who commited very heinous crimes and society's jails couldn't hold them forever. Now our jails are perfectly capable of locking people away for a lifetime. Also, the cost involved: more money goes into giving someone the death penalty than would in keeping them behind bars. There's a sound financial reason against it, in addition to the historical and emotional ones, So I've finally settled against it based on one criteria: "How wide of a margin of error is 'acceptable' when deciding death sentences?" The obvious answer is "Zero". If a single innocent person is put to death, we've undermined everything we believe in. But logically, there's no way to ensure no margin of error and still have the death penalty. So we should get rid of it and start trying to figure out how to empty over-crowded prisons another way. (Like maybe actually reforming some prisoners. Novel approach, don't you think?)

Moon Faery//Slytherin