There is one pro-life cause to which the new US President and the Catholic Church are both committed: an end to the death penalty. And Joe Biden will need all the friends he can get if he is to succeed in fulfilling his pledge to abolish judicial execution
When he entered the White House, Joe Biden clocked up several records: the candidate to win the highest number of popular votes; the oldest president ever elected; and only the second Catholic to occupy the Oval Office. But there is another, perhaps more significant and contentious “first” squirrelled away in the stack of Democrat policies – Biden is the first American president to have pledged to abolish the death penalty.
This gains a poignant significance because Donald Trump authorised the execution of 13 prisoners on federal death row in a killing spree that lasted from July last year to January. Six executions took place after November’s election; three, of Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs, took place in the last few days before Biden was inaugurated. This was more judicial killings than all those in the previous 56 years combined.