ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY
DEFINITION
According to Republic Act No. 7659, death penalty is a penalty for crimes that are "heinous for being grievous, odious and hateful offenses and which, by reason of their inherent or manifest wickedness, viciousness, atrocity and perversity are repugnant and outrageous to the common standards and norms of decency and morality in a just, civilized and ordered society." Death penalty is a cruel, futile and dangerous punishment for "very serious reasons and with due judicial process." According to Amnesty International, a worldwide movement of people working for internationally recognized human rights; death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. Thus, they worked towards abolishing it in order to "end the cycle of violence created by a system riddled with economic and racial bias and tainted with human error."
STANCE
I am in favor of abolishing the death penalty law in the Philippines. Allow me to present my arguments. First, it violates the right to live. Second, it is a very cruel practice. Third, it is anti-poor. Last, death penalty defeats its purpose.
ARGUMENTS
First, the imposition of death penalty violates a person's right to live. Article III Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights, states that "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property…" By imposing death penalty, the right of a criminal to live is being violated.
Furthermore, it is a known fact that majority of Filipinos are Catholics. As said, we have one of the world's largest Christian populations. According to the Ten Commandments of the Church, thou shall not kill. Therefore, nobody is given the right to commit the lives of others. Whether that person is a criminal or not, nobody has the right to
play God and take the life that He has given. Filipinos should "respect and value the sanctity of human life and uphold the virtue and religious doctrines that are expected of us as a...