WSJ's Harwood: Life and Death Could Bind Left and Right

[question everything]

Life and Death Could Bind Left and Right

Political Adversaries May Find Some Common Ground On Abortion, Capital Punishment

By JOHN HARWOOD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 29, 2005; Page A4

(snip)

Last week, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who fought for reinsertion of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, said he was re-evaluating his position on the death penalty. His fellow conservative Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is co-sponsoring legislation with Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts that he hopes will reduce the numbers of aborted Down syndrome fetuses, says he is also open to the possibility of narrowing the range of crimes for which the death penalty would apply.

Linking a reduction in the number of abortions with fewer executions "would be a great discussion to have," observes Mr. Brownback. Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona who is now at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group, adds, "There's room for a new consensus position that both values life and attempts to find an activist government role that nurtures life."

(snip)

After their 2004 defeat, Democrats have been looking for ways to project a more moderate message about their values. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the consensus front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, recently drew attention with a speech emphasizing the tragedy of abortion, though she didn't abandon support for abortion rights.

For their part, Republicans have echoed Pope John Paul II's invocation of a "culture of life" in their calls for curbing abortion, as well as for continued nourishment of Terri Schiavo. But they have also seen the Catholic Church amplify its opposition to the death penalty at a time when Catholics loom increasingly large as a swing voting constituency. In talks and writings, including a 1995 encyclical on "the incomparable worth of the human person," the Pope has exhorted valuing life from conception to natural death, by opposing, among other things, "any type of murder," abortion, euthanasia and genocide.

(snip)

Mr. Zogby, the pollster, says the "culture of life" gives foes of the death penalty a chance to justify a stance at odds with majority opinion, so long as they emphasize that the alternative punishment for heinous crimes is life imprisonment. "There's an opening here if Democrats want to take it," he says.

(snip)

Write to John Harwood at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111205780019191477,00.html

[Tux]

1. I always prefered

Zombification over death for certain crimes anyways. Murder, rape, drug dealing, child molestation.

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/davis1.htm