Texas Needs to Stop Being a Jerk - Cal Thompson, 1st Period

This article explains Texas's attempts to ignore recent medical research and conclusions when determining if someone is intellectually disabled in the context of potential capital punishment. Texas, rather than observing more current information, has tried to claim that 1992 information regarding medical definitions is preferable to 2013 information.

My summary was short, but that's the gist. This heavily relates to the book "Between the World and Be" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which we read for AP Lang (it's brilliant; I highly recommend it) which follows Coates' cases as a lawyer fighting against the death penalty. Personally, I do not condone the death penalty under any circumstances, regardless of the accused's mental health. With so many people being taken off of death row via appeals, how can we rely on a system of execution that potentially victimizes innocents? I need not mention that killing, unless done for immediate defense from someone with intent to kill when no other foreseeable option exists, is morally wrong. I do not believe that anyone deserves to die. Even if it were acceptable in my mind for people to be systematically killed, I would certainly not condone this for people who do not have control of their actions, as is the case for many intellectually disabled people. Ableism is a large part of western culture, from generic insults to crude jokes. We forget that people have the right to be treated as human, and we forget that we are all stuck here on this chunk of magma and rock and life, floating through ever-expanding space in a universe which cannot be defined and which could end in an instant. From what we are able to see, all that exists is this moment right now. So why spend any precious part of the present being an ableist do*chebag?

Source:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-of-mice-and-men-rule-for-texas-executions/508889/