I’ve grown really annoyed by the high-minded tone your paper takes in opposing capital punishment compared with the condescending attitude it has toward those who oppose abortion. Your article by Mark Francis Cohen (“Barrier Method,” 10/20), in which he reports on a lack of progress on contraception technology and the struggle that delayed the abortion pill from getting to market, is a case in point. He suggests that those who oppose the infanticide pill are backwater extremists. Would you treat those who oppose the death penalty with similar disregard?

I realize it’s the height of liberal-chic thinking these days to be vociferously anti-death-penalty while at the same time vociferously pro-abortion. We can probably thank our European neighbors, and the stylish ads being brought to us by the Italian Benetton, for helping us reach this new level of enlightenment about our country’s barbaric practice of capital punishment.

It’s time we accept that we live in a culture that deliberately terminates human life. Each year, we consciously terminate about 50 criminals and a million-and-a-half infants. As far as I’m concerned, publications (such as the Washington City Paper) that continue to hold these mixed-platform views—of being either pro-abortion/anti-death penalty or anti-abortion/pro-death penalty—should lose the moral tone. Until you can find some consistency, your moral outrage is false and is coming way too cheap.

Falls Church, Va.