Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent.
P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).
P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.
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William Ernest Hocking explains the anarchist’s attitude toward the criminal as follows:
As for the criminal, his existence is not forgotten; but it is thought that he is either such by definition only, as one who has disobeyed what we have commanded; or he is such by response to the unnatural environment of the state and the inequalities which it fosters; or else he is the unusual individual of determined ill-will who is best dealt with by near and private hands, since the life of the will, whether for good or for evil, is always intimate, individual, and unique. ("The Philosophical Anarchist," in Hoffman ed., Anarchism, Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 116-117)
Suppose we consider Hocking's three points seriatim.
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