I grouped these two responses together because they struck me as similar.
First of all, thanks for your replies! Interesting stuff!
Honestly I feel like maybe I'm being hypocritical in a way when I say that I'm against the death penalty because if a loved one of mine were say murdered for example, what sentence would I want for that person? I honestly don't know. Under those circumstances, placing myself in the shoes of the victims, I can imagine wanting the harshest possible penalty. But sitting here right now, I also don't think that that feeling, that I think understandable visceral desire for simple vengeance, is necessarily the same thing as justice being done. As an illustration of that, consider that many people who are convicted of offenses like murder ultimately wind up getting exonerated by evidence that comes out after trial. You can consequently free someone who has been sentenced to life in prison, but you can't free an innocent person wrongly convicted who is dead. I also have doubts that I'd actually find the execution of someone satisfying in the end. Just as points.
When it comes to abortion...it's a fertilized egg, I'm sorry. I mean opponents of abortion really like to dramatize rare third-trimester abortions and portray them as the rule, but in reality more than 90% of abortions occur in the first trimester at points when the "unborn baby" looks nothing like a baby, has no consciousness at all, cannot exist outside of the woman's body, and cannot even necessarily feel pain. Comparing that to the Holocaust is just...ridiculous, in my view. Most Jewish people seem to think it's ridiculous too, considering that
83% of them poll as pro-choice.