By Katrina Custardo
Well, here we are. After refusing to do their jobs as senators during the end of the Obama administration, and after completely ignoring how to do things the correct way (i.e. a 60-plus vote for a new justice), we now have Neil Gorsuch to complete the Republican government triad. And now with all three branches of government being Republican, our checks and balances system has failed us.But onto the big news: Right off the bat, Gorsuch has firmly planted in his Republican-ness and cast the tie-ending vote for Arkansas to kill eight inmates in 11 days because the drugs used in lethal injections were about to expire. As noted by Justice Stephen Breyer in the dissenting opinion, “The reason the State decided to proceed with these eight executions is that the ‘use by’ date of the State’s execution drug is about to expire.” This was the night of April 20, and within a couple days, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee, an inmate on death row. This was the first execution in Arkansas since 2005.
Here is where I bring up Gorsuch’s values as a politician, specifically one that has to do with life: Gorsuch is pro-life. In his 2006 book *The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia*, he states, “human life is intrinsically valuable and intentional killing is always wrong.” This is especially ironic, considering that his first move as a Supreme Court justice was to kill 8 people.
Normally, people consider “pro-life” as part of the abortion argument and see it as against “pro-choice.” However, why does “pro-life” stop once the baby is out of the womb? Shouldn’t anti-death penalty also be considered “pro-life”? Specifically, are these inmates not part of the “human life” Gorsuch was talking about in his book?
Gorsuch just showed that he does not stick to what he has said, and he is not “pro-life.” The death penalty is literally anti-life or pro-death, depending on how you want to look at it. And that Arkansas can now kill eight people just because its death drugs are expiring is an affront to human life. Those eight inmates are worth less than those drugs that are about to expire. Arkansas, and Gorsuch, worry more about some expiring drugs than actual human life. It’s astounding that in 2017, America is putting expiring drugs over eight human lives.
This entire Gorsuch situation makes me angry. From when Republican senators refused to even consider Obama’s Supreme Court choice to how Gorsuch was confirmed (with a simple majority vote rather than 60-plus votes), and his first vote as a Justice. Gorsuch is an anomaly in our government system. Not only that, but he also showed in his first decision that he is definitely not “pro-life” as he suggests in his book. He did not show that he believes “intentional killing is always wrong.”
Hey Neil, did you just intentionally kill eight people because some drugs were about to expire? Are you wrong according to your own words in your book? The answer to both of those questions is yes.