Death Penalty and Abortion

I found Conrad’s cartoon, which proposes some kind of connection between the abortion issue and the death penalty issue, to be highly illustrative of the confusion that results from approaching issues with an emotional bias, based upon the assumption that people’s beliefs are related to their quality as human beings.

Linking issues together always reduces the debate to a personal, self-righteous level. For instance, I wonder if he noticed the identical irrationality of the opposite position--held by people who are for abortion, but against the death penalty? Does this mean they want to kill the innocent, but let the guilty live?

His whole argument leaves out in the cold those who are for abortion and for the death penalty, or those who are against both.

So once again, he sheds more heat than light upon his chosen topic. It may enliven the editorial pages, but I don’t think it does much good toward public debate.

BILL KONERSMAN

Pasadena