Pro-life conservatives and millennials should oppose the death penalty

That same pro-liberty, pro-life rationale, adopted by many millennials, logically and inevitably leads to supporting the abolishment of the death penalty.

Millennials have been characterized as the “liberty generation,” embracing a libertarian-leaning mix of beliefs centered on entrepreneurship, individual liberties, and tolerance. Much of conservative media also has been abuzz about how public opinion polls have consistently shown that millennials are strongly in favor of protecting the unborn, in contrast to millennials’ supposedly left-leaning views on other social issues.

In what might initially seem to be an unrelated trend, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center revealed that support for abolishing the death penalty has reached its highest level since the 1960s.

Millennial conservatives now have a historic opportunity to be the generation that finally ends the death penalty once and for all.

The typical arguments for and against the death penalty are as old as the penalty itself and likely have changed little throughout history. Proponents of the death penalty primarily make arguments about deterrence and justice while opponents argue about a certain punishment for an uncertain crime, disparate racial and socioeconomic impacts, and the potential for compassion and forgiveness.

However, for those who are liberty-minded and pro-life, the real abhorrence of the modern death penalty is that the state, as often is represented by a simple majority of voters at a particular time, is creating rules about when people are allowed to live or die.

No crime punishable by death is universally agreed on by everyone in society, which means that large portions of society are subject to having their lives taken away by shifting red lines despite never having consented to it.

The death penalty is a relic of a time when civilization was in a more brutish and savage stage. The death penalty doesn’t seem to be anything exceptionally bad when society as a whole is full of war, crime, disease, famine, and a lack of social stability. When nearly every law-abiding citizen is greatly worried about living to the next year, caring for the lives of horrible criminals seems quite unimportant.

In our modern age, however, we have effective law enforcement, secure prisons, and a society where people are not stuck in a day-to-day struggle for survival. For a society as developed, plentiful, and peaceful as ours, the death penalty sticks out like a sore thumb from the days when villages, cities, and states were constantly on the brink of collapse and anarchy.


The rest of the free world has largely abolished the death penalty. While the actions of other countries ought to not have any bearing on how Americans choose to live our lives and govern ourselves, the arguments, realizations, and value judgments that other liberal democracies have gone through may be useful for us to look over and learn from.

Legally, the means of abolishing the death penalty remain uncertain. Solutions from courts are either on uncertain constitutional grounds or would be inappropriate legislating from the bench.

The most powerful, both legally and symbolically, means of abolishing the death penalty would be passing a constitutional amendment. This would permanently end the death penalty for sure, as well as send a clear signal that our country has definitively moved past it.

The pro-life and liberty movement has not made abolishing the death penalty a key part of its agenda, but we must do so in order to be consistent in our liberty-centered constitutional worldview.

The argument is clear and the opportunity is now. If conservative millennials truly want to be the generation of liberty and life, abolishing the death penalty must be a key part of that agenda and we must be willing to fight for it.

Erich Reimer is a millennial conservative living in Charlottesville, Va.

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