At the Los Angeles Times, Scott Martelle attacks Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey for signing and praising Alabama’s ban on abortion bill while also backing and overseeing the death sentence for seven inmates. Martelle purports to find a contradiction here.
I say “purports” because I doubt Martelle is blind to the obvious way Gov. Ivey’s two positions can be reconciled. She wants to ban abortions because she considers innocent life sacred. She is willing to have the death penalty carried out in some cases because the life being taken is the antithesis of innocent.
Consider some of the very cases Martelle describes. One involved a defendant who 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. Another involved a serial bomber.
It’s obscene to compare taking the life of vicious murderers like these with aborting the life of the unborn.
One doesn’t have to back the Alabama law, which I believe goes too far, to understand the ridiculousness of Martelle’s argument. To be sure, I know staunch anti-abortion conservatives who have serious reservations about the death penalty. But I also know some whose regard for innocent life impels them to support the death penalty for those who wantonly take innocent life.
Both positions are rational and, indeed, respectable. Martelle’s hit piece is neither.
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