Death Penalty and Abortion

In a bioethics class I’m taking, we were talking about the death penalty, and the discussion progressed to include abortion. Someone raised the question: "If a woman on death row happened to get pregnant, should we still execute her?"

I’m pro-choice, and support embryonic stem cell research. But, my gut instinct to the question was "No, of course you can’t kill her baby!"  Then I realized the inherent inconsistency there- in the other cases, I don’t think of the embryo as a baby. I’m not sure how to rectify this.

So, what do you think?  What if the woman was 8 weeks pregnant?  8 months?

Note: I’m against the death penalty in all cases, but that’s another discussion entirely.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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