Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, May 18, 2019. I trust that all my fellow Americans of Norwegian descent had a wonderful
Syttende Mai (pronounced something like “SOOT-in my”). Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.
Michael Brandon Samra might have briefly hoped his life would be spared the day before Alabama executed him on Thursday. For it was then, on Wednesday, that the only official with the unilateral authority to grant the convicted murderer a reprieve declared “every life” — really, every life — to be a sacred gift from God.
But as we can almost always infer from the statements of anti-abortion hardliners, it’s really the “lives” of blastocysts, embryos and fetuses that are valued the most — or at least used disingenuously to pass laws meant to kick the issue of abortion up to the Supreme Court. In a piece posted after Gov. Kay Ivey signed her state’s flagrantly unconstitutional criminalization of nearly all abortions, editorial writer Scott Martelle
called out Alabama’s transparent hypocrisy on the question of protecting “all” life:
Apparently, Ivey’s not averse to returning some of God’s sacred gifts, since as governor she’s overseeing the planned execution ... of Michael Brandon Samra, who was 19 years old when he took part in the quadruple murder of the family of a friend angered by the father’s refusal to let him borrow a pickup truck. The ringleader, who was 15 at the time of the crimes, is serving life in prison.
In fact, since Ivey assumed office two years ago last month, Alabama has executed six other men, including convicted serial bomber Walter Moody who, at 83, became the oldest person executed in the nation’s history when he was strapped onto the gurney last year.
Earlier this year, the state executed Domineque Ray after the Supreme Court refused to issue a stay when Ivey’s government denied the condemned Muslim inmate access to an imam in the death chamber, although it does provide a Christian chaplain.
Although California has the nation’s largest death row with 735 condemned inmates, Alabama has the highest per capita rate of death sentences.
And six weeks after she was sworn into office, Ivey signed into law a measure shortening the appeals process for capital offense, a move that makes it more likely the state will execute the innocent.
So much for Ivey’s notion that the new abortion ban “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious & that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
Or maybe the asterisk after “every” didn’t come through on Twitter.
Source: latimes.com, Opinion, May 18, 2019. Paul Thornton is the Los Angeles Times’ letters editor. He joined the editorial pages in 2005 as a researcher and occasional editorial writer and also served as a Web producer. A UC Berkeley graduate, he lives in Alhambra with his wife, two sons and two cats.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
