My students are currently studying the ethics of Life and Death. Part of the course we’re doing. Sadly, I find I’m taking this article in with me today for discussion: Utah To Execute Killer By Firing Squad -
SALT LAKE CITY – Utah is set to execute a condemned killer by firing squad shortly after midnight Thursday, reviving an old West style of justice that hasn’t been used for at least 14 years and that many criticize as archaic.
Barring the success of any final appeals, Ronnie Lee Gardner will be strapped into a chair, have a target pinned over his heart and die in a hail of bullets from five anonymous marksmen armed with .30-caliber rifles and firing from behind a ported wall.
Just as I was wondering how to discuss with my students how news sent via Twitter by Dr Petra Boynton, about a university – a UNIVERSITY – has led me to check out a group on Facebook called End Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University.
Related articles include Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University at Slog and Can You Hear Us Now at Psychology Today:
In a brief article entitled “Bad Vibrations” just posted at the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum, my colleague Ellen Feder and I express our shock over the follow-up techniques being used by pediatric urologist Dix Poppas at Weill Medical College of Cornell University on girls whose clitorises Poppas has cut down in size.
There’s no point in my repeating here what we say at Bioethics Forum. Instead, I want to use this space to answer some questions I’m already getting from people about this scene.
Poppas says he’s using a “nerve-sparing” technique. How confident are we this will make a difference in terms of saving these girls from the sexual dysfunction (and pain) that many in previous generations have suffered following childhood surgeries designed to make their clits look more petite? Not that confident, frankly.
… yes, my students. This is 2010.
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My own opposition to capital punishment notwithstanding, I’m curious how you feel about the fact that Gardner had the option, and chose the firing squad over lethal injection. Would you have not allowed him the choice?
Advocates for Informed Choice is a non-profit organization advocating for the legal and human rights of children with intersex conditions or differences of sex develoment, like the ones in this story. We work in collaboration with bioethicists, doctors, parents, affected adults, and many others. If you are interested in taking action to help protect these children, and to be sure that possible human rights violations are investigated, please join our Facebook page at http://ow.ly/20wTY or sign up for our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/aiclegal.
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