I've seen the future. It's not pretty.

[trinityvixen]

South Dakota wants to add murder of abortion providers to the definition of people you can kill and still have it be deemed "justifiable" homicide.

Remember that "First they came" poem? Does anything sum up, so brilliantly, why accommodation in the fight for a woman's right to choose is ultimately pointless? There will never be a concession that is enough for the anti-choicers. Oh, parental notification? That seems fair. Teenagers get the craziest ideas--you know, one minute it's a facial piercing, the next an abortion. 24 hour mandatory waiting period between consultation and procedure? I can't see how that would hurt middle-class white women, who are the only people getting abortions, right?

The anti-choice crusade is the textbook example of a slippery slope. Agree to one of the oh-so-reasonable demands (for they are never phrased as requests), and you basically lose the fight. And now you're where we are, with Republicans wanting to redefine rape (only if you were beaten in the process) and then to redefine incest (it can't be a problem if you're over 18!) as they whittle down to the barest of minimums what they think should be acceptable circumstances for getting an abortion: rape, incest, and the life of the mother. (That "life of the mother" clause is, not surprisingly, also under attack.)

First, they want your unfettered right to abortion. Then they want even that barest of minimum freedoms you might "enjoy" to have an abortion if you are 13, the victim of brutal rape by your uncle, and about to die for having been impregnated. They'll want your contraception next. And, when all else fails, because you can no more force people into unrealistic, unnatural celibacy than you can force the mouth-breathing, panty-sniffers pushing this bullshit to stop being so fucking creepy, they'll outright kill the men and women who have any clue how to see you safely through a termination.

Who goes next on that list of justifiable homicides? The Pandagon link has a good point about batterers using this law to kill people who would "kill" their "child" when, in reality, it's just a means to get violent (more violent) on a bitch who won't do what you say ( since you can't kill her and still get the sympathy vote, might as well unload that anger on a doctor, amirite?). So who would be next? Can you kill the women who aborted after the fact? She's a murderer, isn't she? Why fuss about with the uncomfortable questions how many years she should get for murder? The doctor gets a death sentence, if South Dakota has its way. Why shouldn't the woman, too?

I'm so appalled. Just when you thought anti-choicers couldn't sink any lower. I also vow never to let the term "pro-life" pass anyone's lips in front of me without correcting them. Because if this doesn't prove--as the restrictions and bullshit hoops have before it--that anti-choicers haven't got one iota of concern for life, nothing will. And I will bring it up. Constantly. To remind anti-choicers. You stand on the side of these people.

Comments

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Wow, what the hell? What kind of crazy juice are they drinking over there?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's South Dakota. They probably live on the run-off from North Dakota, and I'm pretty sure that stuff is laced with, like, nuclear waste. (What else could possibly be in North Dakota?)

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Read the follow-up at Mother Jones; the law was not intended to target abortion providers, but to allow the use of deadly force in response to an attack that would be non-lethal to the mother but lethal to the fetus. At least, that's what it does now; the current form of the legislation allows only the pregnant woman to use deadly force.

So, pretty much the only additionally allowed act here is that now a pregnant woman can shoot a mugger who's about to punch her in the stomach. Which I don't find all that offensive. Or is feminism's founding principle now the non-humanity of fetuses, rather than a woman's right to choose--which should include the right to choose to protect one's future child.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's really impressive how fucking glib you never fail to be about uteruses. I guess I might be, too, if I wasn't constantly reminded, in news on national and local levels, how having one either makes me a second class citizen or, depending how I use it, a goddamned criminal. There's no goddamned excuse for this sarcastic bullshit:

Or is feminism's founding principle now the non-humanity of fetuses, rather than a woman's right to choose--which should include the right to choose to protect one's future child.

The right to choose, unlike that bullshit, anti-choice "right-to-life" schtick, is exactly as it sounds: choice. Have that baby, abort that fetus. Your choice. Stop beating up the strawfeminist. Nobody said anything about the rightness/wrongness of protecting yourself from harm. We're specifically--and RIGHTLY--wigged out at the gross overstepping of this law, which would basically encourage men to consider a woman pregnant by him his property--property to be defended lethally if he so deems it necessary.

Why do we need to expand existing justifiable homicides specifically to cover a pregnant woman who wants to protect her fetus from assault anyway? I'm sure that, under any law that already exists, no woman alive would ever be tried, much less convicted, for doing as much. You don't need to open the flood gates of crazy the way this law could to make that the case.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

We're specifically--and RIGHTLY--wigged out at the gross overstepping of this law, which would basically encourage men to consider a woman pregnant by him his property--property to be defended lethally if he so deems it necessary.

Don't believe everything you read at Pandagon. Here's the text of the bill, as originally proposed:

Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person, if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great personal injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished.

[The underlined part is what's added to the current criminal statute]

SD's law is a bit archaic in reserving the defense of others provision to only enumerated classes of people--family and employer/employee mainly--but the addition of the unborn child protection changes very little. Or, I should say, changes very little unless the legislators are intending to pass a blatantly unconstitutional law. It appears to be sloppy drafting more than anything.

The amended, or proposed amended (it's unclear from the SD legislative website) bill is more clear about its limited scope:

Section 2. The affirmative defense provided in section 1 of this Act does not apply to:
(1) Acts committed by anyone other than the pregnant woman;
(2) Acts where the pregnant woman would be obligated to retreat, to surrender the possession of a thing, or to comply with a demand before using force in self-defense. However, the pregnant woman is not obligated to retreat before using force or deadly force to protect her unborn child, unless she knows that she can thereby secure the complete safety of her unborn child; or
(3) The defense of human embryos existing outside of a woman’s body.

Which pretty plainly does not allow men to consider women as property. Well, it doesn't endorse it anyways; even assholes get First Amendment rights.

I'm sure that, under any law that already exists, no woman alive would ever be tried, much less convicted, for doing as much. You don't need to open the flood gates of crazy the way this law could to make that the case.

Only by jury nullification and prosecutorial discretion, not by statute. Under the common law that does not recognize the personhood of the fetus, a pregnant women does not have a right to use lethal force to defend against a non-lethal attack that would be fatal to the fetus. And a woman's right to self-defense should not be subject to the whims of the jury and prosecutor.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Only by jury nullification and prosecutorial discretion, not by statute. Under the common law that does not recognize the personhood of the fetus, a pregnant women does not have a right to use lethal force to defend against a non-lethal attack that would be fatal to the fetus. And a woman's right to self-defense should not be subject to the whims of the jury and prosecutor.

Neither should a woman's right to choose. Declaring personhood for a fetus is fraught with problems. For starters, it would pretty much automatically make abortion murder, as by that definition, planned termination of a fetus would be the willful slaying of a person. Women who spontaneously miscarry would have to be investigated to be sure they hadn't intentionally murdered the "person" in question. You could potentially prosecute women for endangering a child if she had a glass of wine while pregnant. These are not far-fetched. Declaring personhood isn't the way to end abortion or the magic bullet to make any self-defense by a pregnant woman magically okay.

I happen to think that prosecutorial discretion is the better alternative there. No woman using potentially lethal force to defend herself would do any more or less while pregnant. Any attack specifically at her fetus is hardly going to be, in the moment, distinguished as such. Any lashing out she did would be to protect herself, and you could not possibly distinguish how much was for her or for her baby because I guarantee you, no matter how afraid she was for her baby, in that instant she could not possibly know either. You can't legislate that.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Declaring personhood for a fetus is fraught with problems.

Certainly. But that's not what this law does.

No woman using potentially lethal force to defend herself would do any more or less while pregnant. Any attack specifically at her fetus is hardly going to be, in the moment, distinguished as such.

The problem is that an attack without weapons will typically be non-lethal to the woman but probably lethal to the fetus. As a general rule, if I have a gun, and someone tries to punch me, I am not allowed to shoot to kill. A pregnant woman, perhaps, should be allowed to shoot to kill, because the unarmed attack is likely to kill her future child.

Anyways, the balance of codifying self-defense situations vs. unintended consequences is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree. Shouting, as per Pandagon, that this law will lead to wholesale slaughter of abortionists and battering of abortion-seeking women is akin to, well, Sarah Palin shouting about death panels. SD's proposed law does no such thing, neither does Obamacare (though both examples of extreme hyperbole at least are related to a reasonable concern). And the feminist "Pro-lifers are insane, pro-murder misogynist batterers!" mantra is exactly as silly and bad as the Tea Party "Obama's a Marxist!" slogan.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Don't do that. I can agree to disagree on self defense, but don't do that thing that the media always does. It's not the same here. Is there hyperbole? Perhaps. It's not fair to say that all hyperbole is equal, though. Saying "Obama's a Marxist" is a demonstrable falsehood, not just hyperbole. Saying anti-choicers are insane and favor the forcible end of abortion is hyperbole based on fact. Many anti-choicers advocate coercion, manipulation, outright lying, and, if all else fails, violence to stop people from helping women exercise their right to choose. It's not all the same.

Why does Pandagon get het up about this? Perhaps because the same state put abortion rights up to a vote last year, intending to outlaw the practice entirely? Perhaps because more than a few of the notable nut-bags of anti-choice rhetoric hail from or make the most noise in that state. The difference is degree. "Death panels!" and "Marxism!" are falsehoods with no antecedent--there is no history of the US government putting old people to death, nor any history of rampant communism, Marxist or otherwise. There is a recent and bloody history of people murdering other people to prevent access to abortion.

As someone at Balloon Juice put it:

Republicans in South Dakota are attempting to pass legislation to legalize what happened to George Tiller. It’s so crazy I can’t even bring myself to comment.

Although I will note that at one time, a pro-choice advocate may have said “fuck,” so both sides are responsible for this crazy climate.

We're not equally responsible when our exaggerations were ever based on truth.

[avram]

So, pretty much the only additionally allowed act here is that now a pregnant woman can shoot a mugger who's about to punch her in the stomach.

Is punching someone in the stomach not already assault in South Dakota? Are South Dakotans not already allowed to use lethal force in self-defense from assault?

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure they are. IANAL so I don't know if this law has a more sinister purpose, but even if edgehopper is right it sounds like a stupid piece of culture-war dog-whistle bullshit, about as useful as giving a fetus the right to vote or buy handguns. Just something to make the feminists mad and the babbling whack-jobs happy.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

No. There's a proportionality rule in self-defense which generally does not allow lethal force to resist non-lethal attacks. I can't shoot someone in the chest or head who is about to punch me in the stomach (though if I'm good enough to aim for the leg, that might be legal). Of course, a punch to the stomach of a pregnant woman does much more harm, and so it may very well be worth codifying that as an exception to the usual proportionality rule.

[avram]

So this law is useful for, what, defense against a mugger who announces in advance that he's only planning to punch the woman in the stomach, and provides some sort of proof of his trustworthiness?

South Dakota already has a "Stand Your Ground" law that lowers the standards for the use of lethal force in self-defense. The sections that this bill seeks to amend already justify lethal force in defense of person or family members against "great personal injury" or "if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony". And "fetal homicide" is already a Class B felony there. I have a hard time imagining a plausible case that is covered by this new law, and not existing law.

So, while I don't know that the proposed law would actually allow gunning down abortion providers, it does look like blatant pandering to the reproductive slavery crowd.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

Now that's so much ridiculousness. Humans can be pretty fragile. If a somebody comes at you with anything besides a padded Nerf baton, that's a potentially lethal attack right there.

And the notion that you can shoot anybody *anywhere* safely is absurd. People can die just as easily from bullets that pierce arteries in the arm or the leg as they can from shots to the head.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Hey, I don't write the laws. And in NY, councilman tried to pass a law requiring policeman to shoot to wound even when faced with a deadly weapon. Self defense isn't the most sensibly defined legal defense.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you heard about this case too - http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/287684

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

No. I hadn't. Now I'm even more upset. Stupid anti-choicers. I'd sooner trade my uterus in for one of those mooing jars at this point than get pregnant in this country.