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Comment by azth | Hacker News Reader

As a non-American, non-Christian, I find the entire fiasco quite weird. Like a lot of cases in the US, why don't they address the core issue? If rape is so common, how about punish the rapists like other advanced countries do? Yes, including the death penalty for serial rapists or repeat offenders.

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Because that's a reactive punishment that does absolutely nothing to help out the woman who might be carrying a fetus post rape, not to mention the fact that rape is already illegal and a rapist isn't exactly going to be deterred by the fact that there's illegality involved. The issue of abortion also touches upon things like ectopic pregnancies where the woman can/will die if an abortion is not performed.

> rapist isn't exactly going to be deterred by the fact that there's illegality involved

Controversial opinion, prisons aren't a deterrent, corporal punishment would leave a more lasting impression and instill fear into would be offenders. It would also be more cost effective and efficient.

Rapists will be deterred when the punishments are actually applied.

Rape is illegal already. Rapists go to prison. The death penalty has never been an effective deterrent and is abhorrent.

The death penalty does work, and it's not abhorrent when applied correctly. What's abhorrent is what we're witnessing today.

Care to cite your evidence that the death penalty deters crime?

You're straw manning. Not all crimes should have the death penalty. But severe abhorrent ones like killing, spreading of chaos (i.e. "terrorism"), or some other abhorrent obvious ones. We see that in countries that do apply the death penalty for such crimes, they have much lower of those crimes compared to those that don't. And they've done it for over 1000 years.

Asking for evidence of your claims is not a strawman. Care to cite any evidence showing any of that to be true?

What country do you live in where rape is uncommon?

Or is it common in your country, but the justice system nails the rapist every time?

It's very uncommon where I am. Rape is severely punished. There are many countries like this, we're not "liberal" countries so they don't align with the Western media agenda.

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