It only sounds like a contradiction if you take “pro-life” literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.

Let me be clear, I’m about as firm a supporter of a woman’s right to choose as they come. I’m also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?

However, the general position of “pro lifers” does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn’t been born yet, and because it hasn’t been born, it’s completely innocent. So you have no right to take it’s life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.

There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.