For the average abortion advocate...
...advocacy of abortion is dealt with as an aesthetic, not a moral, problem. That is why, for instance, the person writing this thinks that abortion is the solution to infanticide. Abortion is private and we are strongly encouraged not to look at what is done. Infanticide is more public and there is a danger that there might blood or screaming or a tiny corpse visible.
This aesthetic approach to killing people also, by the way, completely dominates our discourse about the death penalty. That is why we blab about “deterrence” while making sure that there are as few witnesses as possible. We desire death and lots of it. But we want it very very tidy, quiet and *clean*.
That’s one of the signs of a troubled conscience: a refusal to look our choices in the eye.
Jesus, through Holy Church, offers us a resolution to the conflict our culture of death feels within its breast: stop choosing death. This includes both the death of the unborn and the death of the criminal. No, they are not morally equivalent. But neither is the death penalty the expression of the mercy of God. The Church’s teaching seems reasonable to me.
