Potassium Chloride and Abortion

Some prisoners executed by lethal injection might be so inadequately sedated that they are awake enough to suffer agonizingly painful deaths, according to a study.

April '97.....".....Texas newspapers recently reported a freakish accident. A lady, while hospitalized, was accidentally injected with one of the three poisons used to kill prisoners in the state's death chamber. The horrible way she died, convulsing in pain and screaming that she was burning, shocked the readers.

Potassium chloride is the salt of potassium after it's reacted with hydrochloric acid. In large doses, injected intravenously, it would burn and hurt horribly, because it's a salt and because it instantly throws off the chemical balance of the blood with which it comes into contact. It makes all muscles lock up in extreme contraction that would hurt unbearably.

In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.

The National Abortion Federation is training doctors to inject potassium chloride into a preborn baby’s heart. Since the procedure kills the baby while in the mother’s womb, abortionists argue they cannot be prosecuted under the ban.

In the case of lethal injections, murderers have the advantage of being anesthetized before the potassium chloride stops their heart. But I guess the babies are expected to "tough it out."