The pro-life ideology is misleading. A deceiving misnomer. It claims human life has value and no state or person should take life away. This logic, however, only pertains to fetuses. Once you are out of the womb, your life is expendable.
If you die at the hands of a school shooter, then all you get is “thoughts and prayers.” If it’s part of an ethnic cleansing, then it’s your fault for being a “demon that lives on earth.” And if you’re on death row, then you have lost the right to life.
Defenders of the death penalty claim that maintaining the life of a prisoner is too costly for the state. The claims of this argument are inaccurate, and its logic applies equally to abortion.
In much the same way, the birth and raising of a child can be costly for the mother. Is the taking of her child’s life suddenly valid? If the economic costs for the death penalty — whether imagined or real — justify ending a life, this same logic must also apply to any low-income mothers.
Yet why stop there? If the U.S., one of the richest countries in the world, cannot afford to keep a prisoner alive, then any mother — no matter how rich or poor — can also have an abortion.
The economic arguments for abortion are regularly rejected by pro-lifers. If a mother cannot have an abortion on economic grounds, then the state cannot justify the death penalty on economic grounds.
Either pro-life supporters must accept abortion has an economic defense, or they must find another reason to support the death penalty.
The other reason they support the death penalty is that those who receive the death penalty have given up their right to life.
This idea that you can lose your right to life — a common defense for the death penalty — is contradictory to the pro-life foundation of every human life having intrinsic value. This value for human life is often rooted in a religious or philosophical belief. This value of life is not dependent on innocence. According to the very document that birthed our nation, life is an inalienable right, not a privilege.
Privileges can be given up. Rights cannot. They should never be taken away by any person or government. The value of life is not contingent on its works. Rather, human life possesses value merely for being a human life. When a human being has committed such a grave crime, they should lose privileges: holding public office, having a driver’s license and owning a gun. They should not, however, lose rights, such as freedom of religion, a fair trial or life.
Human life is not conditional on behavior or correctness; it is valuable because it exists. If every human has the possibility to lose their life because of wrongs they have committed, then is not the life of every human in danger? After all, we have all committed grave errors.
To be truly pro-life, you must protect life in all manners. You must be so radically in support of life that you oppose not only abortion but also any instance where human life is at risk.
You can’t have it both ways. Either you can claim that life is valuable no matter what, and you stop supporting the death penalty, or you accept that the same defenses for the death penalty apply to abortion.
Contact Timothy Dillehay at tdillehay@alligator.org. Follow him on X @timothydilleh.
Timothy Dillehay is a political science and history sophomore and a Spring 2026 Opinions Columnist for The Alligator. He writes on issues related to university administration and student government. In his free time, Timothy enjoys journaling, reading comics and classics, and reviewing films on his Letterboxd.
