A Pro-Life Defense of Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment

We rec­om­mend our pod­cast about the Ohio abor­tion amend­ment which you can lis­ten to here

In 2021 I was asked to speak at an Iowa Sen­ate sub-com­mit­tee and I gave my sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment specif­i­cal­ly con­cern­ing a crim­i­nal who would kid­nap, rape, and then mur­der minors. That was the spe­cif­ic scope of the bill, to my sur­prise I was the only one who spoke in favor of the bill and twen­ty or so spoke against it most­ly cit­ing unjust courts, inhu­mane treat­ment of the crim­i­nal, and a soci­ety that has pro­gressed fur­ther than the death penal­ty. When I spoke I not only sup­port­ed the bill but I encour­aged the Iowa Sen­a­tors to take it a step fur­ther and ful­ly rein­sti­tute the death penal­ty for all cap­i­tal crimes. As you can imag­ine this drew the ire of many, includ­ing the Black Lives Mat­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive who spoke imme­di­ate­ly after me and called me a racist for my posi­tion. This was not total­ly unex­pect­ed nor was the Iowa main­stream media’s cov­er­age that was framed neg­a­tive­ly towards my posi­tion.

One thing you should know about me is that I am very much unapolo­get­i­cal­ly pro-life. In fact, I am so pro-life I actu­al­ly would not describe myself as pro-life, but an abo­li­tion­ist. I don’t want to mere­ly see abor­tion lim­it­ed or reg­u­lat­ed, I want to see it abol­ished and com­plete­ly out­lawed! Hold­ing to this posi­tion, and speak­ing of it often in pub­lic, has allowed me to con­nect and net­work with sev­er­al pro-lif­ers and abo­li­tion­ists on social media. When I post­ed my posi­tion on social media I was sur­prised at the mes­sages I got ask­ing me how I could hold to a pro-life stance and a pro-cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment stance at the same time? Before we exam­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment let me say this, oppos­ing abor­tion and being in favor of life does not in any way con­tra­dict a pro-cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment stance.

To prop­er­ly under­stand cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment we have to under­stand God’s pur­pose for the civ­il gov­ern­ment. With that in mind let’s con­sid­er these pas­sages:

Gen­e­sis 6:9 “Who­ev­er sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.”

Romans 13:1–4 Let every soul be sub­ject to the gov­ern­ing author­i­ties. For there is no author­i­ty except from God, and the author­i­ties that exist are appoint­ed by God. There­fore who­ev­er resists the author­i­ty resists the ordi­nance of God, and those who resist will bring judg­ment on them­selves. For rulers are not a ter­ror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the author­i­ty? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s min­is­ter to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s min­is­ter, an avenger to exe­cute wrath on him who prac­tices evil.

1Peter 2:13–15 There­fore sub­mit your­selves to every ordi­nance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to gov­er­nors, as to those who are sent by him for the pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the igno­rance of fool­ish men.

God’s pur­pose for civ­il gov­ern­ment is to pun­ish the wicked and praise the good. By pun­ish­ing the wicked the civ­il gov­ern­ment pro­tects the inno­cent and by prais­ing the good there is a pos­i­tive moti­va­tion to not be wicked. It should be not­ed that the wicked and the good are deter­mined by God’s stan­dard found in His word. With­out a moral com­pass found in God’s moral law civ­il gov­ern­ment would be noth­ing more than a group of orga­nized street thugs.

God gave civ­il gov­ern­ment to mankind with very spe­cif­ic instruc­tions in Gen­e­sis 9:6 where He insti­tutes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is to be car­ried out by men, as opposed to God or old age, to ful­fill the pun­ish­ment. God makes it clear that this man­date con­tin­ues in Romans when He says, “for he does not bear the sword in vain” and in 1Peter when He says, “for the pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers.” When a civ­il gov­ern­ment sub­mits itself to God’s stan­dard and tru­ly becomes a min­is­ter of God (see Romans 13:4) by car­ry­ing out cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment right­eous­ly, it pro­tects its inno­cent cit­i­zens who live under their author­i­ty.

When it comes to being pro-life there is some­thing we need to exam­ine and that is self-defense. Self-defense is under the umbrel­la of being pro-life, after all, how could any­one be pro-life and not give room for an inno­cent life to be defend­ed? Self-defense or the right of limb has always been con­nect­ed to the right to life, just look at what the great legal com­men­ta­tor Sir William Black­stone had to say about it:

Both the life and limbs of a man are of such high val­ue, in the esti­ma­tion of the law of Eng­land that it par­dons even homi­cide if com­mit­ted se defend­en­do, or in order to pre­serve them. For what­ev­er is done by a man, to save either life or mem­ber, is looked upon as done upon the high­est neces­si­ty and com­pul­sion.

Black­stone William, Com­men­taries on the Laws of Eng­land, (1765–1769) 49

It is well with­in the right to life —pro-life— for an inno­cent per­son to defend them­self even to the point of killing their abuser. The line drawn is who was being an evil­do­er and who was the orig­i­nal vic­tim of the crime. If some­one was against the right to self-defense they would actu­al­ly hold a posi­tion of being anti-life as they would be giv­ing a green light for mur­ders to do their evil works unop­posed.

Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as God insti­tut­ed it, is a nation’s self-defense against guilty evil­do­ers of par­tic­u­lar crimes where the inno­cent per­son was unable or unwill­ing to ade­quate­ly defend them­self. It is a God insti­tut­ed func­tion of the civ­il gov­ern­ment to uphold jus­tice in the land. It is also in the cat­e­go­ry of lov­ing your neigh­bor. When peo­ple read that last sen­tence they may be con­fused, but it is a true state­ment, you can­not right­ly love your neigh­bor with­out extend­ing the right of defense and pro­tect­ing the inno­cent.

Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment not only fits with­in the pro-life nar­ra­tive it is actu­al­ly the pro-life posi­tion. If you are not pro-cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment you can­not with any sub­stance say you are pro-life for in every instance what is meant by pro-life is pro-inno­cent life. Those who would find them­selves fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment —based on the cri­te­ria found in God’s word— are no longer inno­cent but guilty and should right­ly and just­ly be pun­ished by the civ­il gov­ern­ment.

So how can I be in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and be pro-life at the same time? Sim­ple, I under­stand God’s design for civ­il gov­ern­ment and rec­og­nize the intrin­sic val­ue of each human life. When you do these two things you have no choice but to be pro-life and in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at the same time.