The Cold-Hearted Logic of Killing for the Budget
 
        The Health Minister in Lithuania has recently stated that lethal injections are essentially a proper treatment for disability and poverty. She notes that death is cheaper than palliative care, and thinks euthanasia should be legalized for that reason. The rhetoric of “compassion” for the poor is used for governmental costs savings.
        Lithuania has recently pledged a major boost in military spending because of the crisis in nearby Ukraine. Given this timing, is there a connection between a surge in spending for weapons and a proposal for lethal cost savings elsewhere?
 

 
Drugs that Kill
 
        Another execution has been badly botched in Arizona, a man dying after almost two hours in agony, with the same drugs that caused this year's previous botched execution in Oklahoma. Euthanasia opponent Wesley Smith notes a connection: “The drugs that are used in lethal injection executions are also used in assisted suicide/euthanasia. Yet, we are told with regard to the former lethal use, that they cause pain and suffering – but with the latter use, it is peaceful, calm ‘death with dignity.’ . . .Studies have shown that euthanasia and assisted suicide killings can also take much time and cause adverse side effects – other than death, I mean – such as vomiting and seizures.”
        See also two good letters to the editor to the Washington Post against assisted suicide from a doctor in Oregon and a New Hampshire state legislator.
 

 
Lethal Sex Selection  
 
        Jay Sun declares himself to be pro-choice, but in an article called “The Disconnect between Feminists and Abortion” shows he is getting very uncomfortable, especially when noting this startling statistic:  “more women have been killed because of their gender in the past hundred years than the combined deaths in all the wars of the 20^th century. The vast majority of female killings have happened either through sex selective abortion or its more extreme cousin, sex selective infanticide . . . I can’t presume to speak for feminism, but I would imagine that anybody who considers themselves a feminist would speak out harshly against sex selective infanticide and abortion. And yet, I can’t help but think that abortion really isn’t that much different from infanticide. They’re both conscious, premeditated decisions to terminate human life in its earliest stages.”
 

 

Photo courtesy of LiveActionNews.org 

Gaza
 

         More comment on the horrifying situation in Gaza from CL sympathizers Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Brian Gorman of Red Letter Christians.

 

 
Quotation of the Week
Leonard Peltier, CL endorser
 


        I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor deserve to.