Lethal injection.
In Boston, three major Harvard-affiliated hospitals -- Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and Beth Israel Deaconess -- have responded to the ban by making the injections the new standard operating procedure for abortions beginning at around 20 weeks' gestation, said Dr. Michael F. Greene, director of obstetrics at Mass. General.
"No physician even wants to be accused of stumbling into accidentally doing one of these procedures," Greene said.
Indeed. Let's keep our priorities straight.Medical staff inject either the heart drug digoxin or potassium chloride, a potentially poisonous salt also used in state executions.
To "the corner," NCO's blog, a lawyer emails:
Subject: Potassium Chloride??
Wowsa. I have done some litigation in the area of lethal injection, and potassium chloride is typically the third drug used in the "three drug cocktail" most states use when they execution someone. It is a painful, painful drug that stops the heart. To mitigate that pain for prisoners, states give them sodium thiopental, which is a short-acting barbituate, then pancuronium bromide, which acts as a paralyzing agent, THEN they give the potassium chloride. It would be extremely painful for a prisoner to have an injection of potassium chloride alone. It stuns me that that's what they're using to kill these babies in utero.
Thanks to the Curt Jester.
