March 9, 2024

Remember a month or so ago when national attention was riveted on Alabama’s machinations to devise a new and easier way to execute a criminal? The experts wanted something quick, expedient, that would get the gruesome job done without too much “discomfort” to the man to be put to death. Using nitrogen gas, apologists argued, was a more “civilized way” to end a life. Thank God, they observed, that we’ve moved on from the gallows, the guillotine, the electric chair, the gas chamber, the firing squad. Left unsaid was the state’s attempt in 2022 to execute this same individual, Kenneth Smith, by the other allegedly “humane” method called lethal injection; that method had to be abandoned after repeated failed attempts by the executioners to insert a needle into his arm to deliver the lethal poison!

Well, of course, this new method didn’t work as promised either. Observers reported it took some 22 minutes for the man to expire, after a lot of spasms and obvious torment. I suppose we’ll have to keep looking for a tidier way to execute a condemned person.

This is, of course, what Pope Francis terms the “throwaway culture.” If life, our own or someone else’s, becomes burdensome, inconvenient, or in-the-way, well, dispose of it, toss it aside, the argument goes.

Now we have another example with the abortion pill. Champagne corks are popping because two of the largest pharmacies in our nation are beginning to make available their new drug and a pregnant woman can visit one of these drugstore chains and quickly pick up the pills necessary to end a life. Here the condemned is not a prisoner but the tiny, fragile, helpless baby in the womb. A quick walk through the aisles can get a shopper some aspirin, a bottle of water, shaving cream, and abortion drugs. Talk about convenience! Now we can more easily “throw away” that pre-born baby. Another victory for tidy, clean, private erasing of life.

Just this week, The New York Times gushed on its front page that France has “enshrined” abortion rights in its constitution, the first to do so! What a great step forward for civilization! How long before other countries decide to hop on the bandwagon and make abortion part of their country’s constitution as well?

This hit series is far from over. Here in New York, the crusade is underway once again for physician-assisted suicide, with “quick, painless” drugs available to help grandma or grandpa, allegedly near death already, to “die with dignity,” liberating them from feeling like a burden, saving us all a bundle of money, freeing-up another bed in our jammed hospitals or nursing homes. As we’ve seen elsewhere in the world, this march of “progress” to encourage people to kill themselves moves quickly to those with chronic illnesses, disabilities, depression, or any life society deems inconvenient, unproductive, or troublesome. Given its seemingly endless desire to help people kill themselves, New York might need to change its name from the Empire State to the Vampire State!

It’s so…civilized, clean, thoughtful, quick, convenient…and deadly. When death is prescribed as a cure, life becomes a disease from which we must be rescued. The death row prisoner, the preborn baby, the person with a disability who battles depression, the elder whose life is thought worthless, the Israeli, the Palestinian, the Ukrainian, the refugee…; Who will be next on the “throwaway” list?

The Pontifical Academy for Life, reacting to the misguided constitutional amendment in France, said, “In the era of universal human rights, there cannot be a ‘right’ to taking a human life.” See, we’ve got it backwards: life is sacred, “inalienable,” as our founders believed, insisting that the “right to life” is a given. We are at our best when we rally in defense of life, especially whenever it is threatened. We don’t dream up new ways to eradicate it. This is an “arms race” to cheapen life. Give me a “culture of life” over a thriving “culture of death” any day.