Capital punishment is always a bioethical issue – but there are few cases more strikingly related than Lisa Montgomery, who is scheduled to be executed with a lethal injection in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on December 8.

Ms Montgomery’s crime was horrific. In 2004 she drove from Kansas to neighbouring Missouri to meet a pregnant woman named Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She strangled Mrs Stinnett, cut the baby out of her womb and returned home where she claimed that the baby was her own.

She was quickly arrested and charged with “kidnapping resulting in death”, which is a federal crime. She will be the first woman to be executed in a federal prison in 67 years.

For The Bulwark, Michael Stokes Paulsen argues that pro-lifers should “vote against Donald Trump’s reelection.” I don’t have any blanket view of how pro-lifers should vote in 2020. Personally, I subscribe to Ramesh Ponnuru’s and Robert George’s view that Joe Biden has practically precluded himself from earning my own vote. He promises to repeal the Hyde amendment — which bars federal dollars from being used to fund abortion — and his running mate has enthusiastically endorsed a bill in the Senate to do just that. Per the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, the Hyde amendment saves around 60,000 unborn lives every single year. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute claims that “approximately one-fourth of women who would have Medicaid-funded abortions instead give birth when this funding is unavailable.” In his argument, Paulsen makes no mention of the Hyde amendment or what the consequences of its repeal would be.

People across Poland stayed off their jobs and huge crowds poured onto the streets for a seventh straight day of protests Wednesday, enraged over a top court ruling that bans abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities.