Cherish Life?

When I tell people the town I live in, many times they say, "Oh yeah, that's where they kill people." Unfortunately, it's true. Huntsville is where the death penalty is played out for inmates on death row. Being a strong opponent of the death penalty, I take no pleasure in this.

I was driving around town, in Huntsville today, and saw a billboard that read: "Cherish Life" at the top, with a picture of a baby below it. Without even having to look back, I knew what the billboard must be referring to. Sure enough. It was about abortion.

Here's what I don't get. People want to apply a certain "ethic" of life to the abortion issue. Their slant is that people should not be intentionally killed, as they apply their line of reasoning to an unborn fetus. But these same people will then say that people who do especially bad things should be killed (i.e. the death penalty).

Now I believe there should be consequences for bad things, particularly evil, sinister things, like murder. But I just do not think it's okay to kill people. How can the same person who says, "cherish life" about babies not apply the same ethic to babies who grow up to be adults? How is it ever okay to kill people?