Is Mother Jones reporting this correctly? Oy vey:
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus-a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon…
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state’s legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion-even if she wanted one.
Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators…
This sounds a little difficult to justify constitutionally, or at the very least sneak past the federal law protecting reproductive health providers, right? While we certainly don’t have a shortage of pro-life radical types in our own legislature, it’s tough to imagine even former Sen. Dave “I Hope Babies Get AIDS” Schultheis coming up with this one.
And please, readers, that is not a dare. Colorado gets enough of this kind of press as it is.
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It’s a generic “defense of others” bill, but includes explicitly “unborn child”. They’re opening up a can of worms, here…
What if I hear someone’s going to go out and bomb an abortion clinic? Can I kill that person instead, to defend the people at the clinic? What about going after the whole Army of God group?
Can an abused wife kill her abusing husband if she thinks he’s going to kill her? Can he kill her if she goes out to Planned Parenthood for care, thinking she’s going to terminate a pregnancy?
The possibilities are endless. The bill is just endlessly stupid, poorly thought out.
Well, maybe to rational, reasonable people but clearly not to the 22 state reps and 4 state senators that are co-sponsoring it.
But despite what they think, that doesn’t alter the reality that the bill is craptastic.
Same goes for the idiots in 12 states proposing to re-fight John C. Calhoun’s state nullification battle. We’ve been there, done that, hated it, and all they can think is, “even if it’s unconstitutional, it’s important to try it, just once.”
“craptastic”
Heh. Yep, that is a succinct summation of this proposed bill.
… at least they’ll still be able to prosecute clinic bombers on mayhem charges. So maybe that will be enough of a deterrent…
/snark
There’s always Disorderly Conduct.
Murder would be better, though.
Certain Republicans demonstrate that property is more important the people. They certainly can’t tolerate that!
It reminds me of how, after Kristallnacht, the Nazis persecuted some of the participants for rape because it violated the laws against Germans and Jews having sexual relations, but no one was charged with murder.
They think it’s worth, oh, maybe 2 or 3 pennies.
As a general rule, there is not a constitutional requirement that a state protect people from private violence either with police or with legal prohibitions, although the recent U.S. Supreme Court holding in Heller, the case that recognized an individual right to bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment arguably also holds that a right to personal self-defense, at least in one’s home, has constitutional stature subject to reasonable definition under state law.
The U.S. Constitution generally governs what a state must not do, rather than what a state must do.
Similarly, it isn’t at all obvious that a state is constitutionally prohibited from removing criminal and civil sanctions under state law for “honor killings” as a form of justifiable homicide.
There are equal protection arguments, the state law justification might not apply to violations of a federal homocide crime, and this could be interpreted as an undue burden on the rights of the woman seeking an abortion, but the legal arguments involved are very different from those involved in a state law prohibiting abortions.
is the legislative record discussing the bill and its intentions.
Your analysis is excellent; in case anyone has any doubts about my criticisms of the bill above, I didn’t mean to indicate that the bill was necessarily unconstitutional, or that there wasn’t at least some thought put in to it by those on the right who think they’re geniuses for coming up with this approach. The problem they have is that, having coming up with some way to get around the constitutional and abortion rights questions, they’ve crafted a bill so generic that it falls somewhere between “Wild West Revisited” and “Honor Killings for Christians”.
Does that mean you can shoot a bartender serving a pregnant woman?