Elijah Page
It's always fun living in South Dakota. The big story we've been following here for the past two weeks is the impending execution of 24-year-old convicted murderer Elijah Page. It would be the state's first execution since 1947, so naturally, all the pro-lifers were very excited about it. "An eye for an eye!" they shouted. "Kill him now!" others said. They wondered why he had been kept alive this long, given that the brutal, meth-induced murder he committed was in March 2000.
As the buildup to the execution continued, I found myself becoming more and more angry. This is South Dakota, after all. The governor and the Legislature love to talk about how this is state has created a "culture of life" by passing an extremist ban on abortion. In fact, up until the execution countdown began a few weeks ago, the so-called culture of life in South Dakota was all any of the politicians here ever talked about – with the drought coming in a close second.
But as the execution of Elijah Page drew near, the silence was deafening. No one protested that. No talk about building a "culture of life." No, because executing prisoners, that's OK. Elijah Page was part of a three-person team that brutally murdered one of their friends. They tied him up, forced Drano and hydrochloric acid down his throat, beat him to a pulp, then drove him out to a gulch in the Black Hills, where they threw rocks on his head.
So, you see, no one cares what happens to Elijah Page. No one wants to defend a person who would do something like that. And actually, that's understandable to me. The part that makes me angry is the whole "culture of life" rhetoric. The governor, who happens to be Catholic, actually made the point during an interview that the death penalty is different from abortion – and that the church is "not necessarily" opposed to capital punishment. Therefore, he said, he had no intention of sparing the life of Elijah Page.
So last night, in the midst of my 12-hour shift devoted to covering the execution story, we got word a few hours before the lethal injection was set to start that Rounds (the S.D. governor) was going to grant a stay of execution. We had no details at that point, just that the execution wasn't going to happen. And most of my colleagues were angry. How could Rounds do this? Why would he do such a thing? It's ridiculous!
Until finally I couldn't take it anymore. "How could he not do this?" I responded. "When you blow smoke all day about being pro-life, you damn well better not let an execution proceed under your watch."
But that angered my extremely conservative co-worker, who retorted, "There's a difference between innocent life and non-innocent life." To which I replied, "I think that's crap." If you're going to call yourself pro-life under those terms, then I think you need to qualify it by saying, "I'm pro-unborn-life, or pro-life-toward-people-I-think-are-worthy." And the big question I want to propose to the pro-lifers in this state would be – Wouldn't life have been much better if Elijah Page's mother (who, by the way, was a drug-addicted prostitute who loaned her young son out to pedophiles in exchange for drugs) had just had an abortion?
You can read everything you ever wanted to know and more about Elijah Page here.
As the buildup to the execution continued, I found myself becoming more and more angry. This is South Dakota, after all. The governor and the Legislature love to talk about how this is state has created a "culture of life" by passing an extremist ban on abortion. In fact, up until the execution countdown began a few weeks ago, the so-called culture of life in South Dakota was all any of the politicians here ever talked about – with the drought coming in a close second.
But as the execution of Elijah Page drew near, the silence was deafening. No one protested that. No talk about building a "culture of life." No, because executing prisoners, that's OK. Elijah Page was part of a three-person team that brutally murdered one of their friends. They tied him up, forced Drano and hydrochloric acid down his throat, beat him to a pulp, then drove him out to a gulch in the Black Hills, where they threw rocks on his head.
So, you see, no one cares what happens to Elijah Page. No one wants to defend a person who would do something like that. And actually, that's understandable to me. The part that makes me angry is the whole "culture of life" rhetoric. The governor, who happens to be Catholic, actually made the point during an interview that the death penalty is different from abortion – and that the church is "not necessarily" opposed to capital punishment. Therefore, he said, he had no intention of sparing the life of Elijah Page.
So last night, in the midst of my 12-hour shift devoted to covering the execution story, we got word a few hours before the lethal injection was set to start that Rounds (the S.D. governor) was going to grant a stay of execution. We had no details at that point, just that the execution wasn't going to happen. And most of my colleagues were angry. How could Rounds do this? Why would he do such a thing? It's ridiculous!
Until finally I couldn't take it anymore. "How could he not do this?" I responded. "When you blow smoke all day about being pro-life, you damn well better not let an execution proceed under your watch."
But that angered my extremely conservative co-worker, who retorted, "There's a difference between innocent life and non-innocent life." To which I replied, "I think that's crap." If you're going to call yourself pro-life under those terms, then I think you need to qualify it by saying, "I'm pro-unborn-life, or pro-life-toward-people-I-think-are-worthy." And the big question I want to propose to the pro-lifers in this state would be – Wouldn't life have been much better if Elijah Page's mother (who, by the way, was a drug-addicted prostitute who loaned her young son out to pedophiles in exchange for drugs) had just had an abortion?
You can read everything you ever wanted to know and more about Elijah Page here.
posted by Melissa @ 11:08 AM
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