Professor Beattie Makes a Good Point
Tina Beattie, Director of the Digby Stuart Research Centre for Religion, Society and Human Flourishing at the University of Roehampton, has posted a blog in The Tablet which makes an excellent point, demonstrating the hypocrisy of the outcry at Oklahoma's botched execution for a couple of reasons. First of all, she highlights the fact, reported in the Guardian , that British companies had been secretly exporting potassium chloride to America for use in executions. Next, Beattie makes the link between the use of this drug in US executions and the fact that it is also used in this country to inject the foetal heart in cases of late abortion. The website of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists offers this advice: For all terminations at gestational age of more than 21 weeks and 6 days, the method chosen should ensure that the foetus is born dead. This should be undertaken by an appropriately trained practitioner. Intracardiac potassium chloride i...