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Michelle Quist: Utah is ‘pro-life’ — but why does that apply only to abortions, and not to gun control or the death penalty?

Being pro-life should extend to policy discussions beyond abortion, including capital punishment and guns.

Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Tribune staff. Michelle Quist.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring”

What does it mean to be pro-life?

In the abortion context, pro-life means valuing the life of a fetus more than the rights of the woman who carries her. As a society, we seek to provide protection for the baby who can’t speak for herself. In our liberty-centered tradition, it means something for conservatives to value life over liberty.

But being pro-life should extend to policy discussions beyond abortion.

When it comes to capital punishment, conservatives are not usually on the side of life.

FILE - In this Oct. 9, 2014, file photo, Department of Corrections officials look through a window from the witness room, at right, outside the newly renovated death chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla. Even as President Barack Obama tries to make a hard case for sentencing reform, prisoner rehabilitation and confronting racial bias in policing, he has been less clear about the death penalty. Obama has hinted that his support for capital punishment is eroding, but he has refused to discuss what he might call for. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

The justifications we use for the death penalty fall short. Common arguments include the right to be free of criminal influence, the rights of the victims to exact punishment, the right of a state to deter crime and the right of society to not bear the expense of life-without-parole sentences.

But if we claim to value life over liberty, then how can we justify state-sponsored death?

The Utah Legislature is once again considering a bill that would abolish the death sentence in Utah. Nineteen other states have already done so.

Capital punishment is discriminatory in its application. Those who die under the death penalty are mostly poor and disproportionately black. Ninety-six percent of states that have studied race and the death penalty found discrimination.

It also relies on a system that makes mistakes. More than 159 people have been freed from death row after evidence of their innocence exonerated them. Capital punishment doesn’t account for the fallibilities of our legal system, and it doesn’t deter crime.

It is expensive to prosecute a capital case, and cases languish and crawl through the court system for decades before they reach finality. Analysts in 2012 determined that death penalty cases cost $1.6 million more than life-without-parole sentences.

Rep. Gage Froerer, who is sponsoring the legislation this year in the House, said he is now against the death penalty because “it’s very clear that this, as it exists today, is not good public policy.” House Speaker Greg Hughes supports Froerer’s bill, which may be enough to see it pass.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) House Speaker Greg Hughes, center, is joined by Rep. Gage Froerer, R-Huntsville, left, and former U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman as they hold a news conference at the Capitol to discuss HB379, which would end the death penalty in Utah.

Hughes said, “I think it’s an outdated form of punishment and sentencing. I think we as a society in 2018 are better than that.”

We are.

Knowing what we know about capital punishment, how can we not support life?

What about guns? Doesn’t a conversation about guns belong in a platform proclaiming life?

Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida think so. They were victims of a mass shooting last week that killed 17.

Students gather on the steps of the old Florida Capitol protesting gun violence in Tallahassee, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. Students at schools across Broward and Miami-Dade counties in South Florida planned short walkouts Wednesday, the one-week anniversary of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. (AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser)

Teenagers in Utah care too. Students in Salt Lake plan to rally at the end of March, along with students all over the nation, in a campaign they’re calling March for Our Lives.

Elizabeth Love, a student at West High School, wrote a letter that said,

“We are looking for solutions that are common sense and that gun owners can support, because gun owners don’t like gun violence either. Nobody wants to do anything too radical. This passion is just that we want to do something.”

There are measures we can take that respect the Second Amendment while also protecting lives. Do 18-year-olds really need to be able to buy AR-15s?

Appropriately, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, for whom the high school in Florida is named, was a journalist, political activist and suffragette. In 1917 she spoke to Florida legislators about women’s rights.

She said, of the experience, “All they did was spit in the spittoons. They didn’t pay any attention to us at all.”

I can relate.

Those who are involved in politics can usually trace back to the issue that prompted their initial involvement. For these teenagers in Florida, their political involvement was triggered by a boring day at school that turned into a nightmare of gunshots, running, screaming and terror. They will remember the smells. They will remember the sounds. They will remember everything.

In our clamor for pro-life policies, we must remember what we stand for — life.

Will our legislators be spitting in a spittoon while my daughters march to the Capitol?

Let’s pay attention.


Michelle Quist is an editorial writer for The Salt Lake Tribune who values life so much that she has seven little lives of her own. And she doesn't want them to have to worry about gunmen in schools.