Justice demands all are treated equally under the law. This pertains not only to the death penalty which the High Court ruled has been biased against African-Americans in our state, but for the past 45 years there is absolutely no justice, no equality under the law for the millions of the unborn, humans developing in their mother’s wombs (who didn’t begin life here and in the same way?), who have been denied their most basic right-the right to life.

When the defendant’s attorney, Neil Fox, claims that “by striking down the 1981 death penalty statute, Washington now joins the overwhelming majority of the world’s democracies in its respect for human life,” this ruling is merely a declaration that the state will no longer commit lawful murder against convicted criminals. The state, as well as the overwhelming majority of the world’s democracies whose laws allow abortion, is far from having respect for human life for the life of a child in a mother’s womb is never safe from execution without representation or due process, while even the child’s father has no rights regarding the life of his child. Both father and child are denied their human rights.

While most consider it to be more humane to eliminate the death penalty, it would not exist in the first place if those committing crimes that warranted the death penalty under the statute were not born: thus, the right to human life is the first condition in determining rights; i.e., no rights would exist if one is not alive.

One could say that this is a step in the right direction respecting human life; yet when human life can be arbitrarily snuffed out (as the Washington state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner”) in its most vulnerable state of being, we cannot truthfully claim to respect human life but merely “respect” human life categorized. Isn’t categorizing human life the worst kind of example of an arbitrary and biased form of law?

Elaine Biggerstaff

Bonney Lake