{"id":54,"date":"2011-02-15T09:10:52","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T17:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/blog\/?p=54"},"modified":"2011-02-15T09:10:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T17:10:52","slug":"south-dakota-moves-to-legalize-killing-abortion-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers
\nby Kate Sheppard
\nhttp:\/\/motherjones.com\/politics\/2011\/02\/south-dakota-hb-1171-legalize-killing-abortion-providers<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2014a 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.
\nThe 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\u2014even if she wanted one.
\nJensen 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.
\n“The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers,” says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. “This is not an abstract bill,” Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a “misguided extremist invokes this ‘self-defense’ statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer,” the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.
\nThe original version of the bill did not include the language regarding the “unborn child”; it was pitched as a simple clarification of South Dakota’s justifiable homicide law. Last week, however, the bill was “hoghoused”\u2014a term used in South Dakota for heavily amending legislation in committee\u2014in a little-noticed hearing. A parade of right-wing groups\u2014the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota\u2014all testified in favor of the amended version of the law.
\nJensen, the bill’s sponsor, has said that he simply intends to bring “consistency” to South Dakota’s criminal code, which already allows prosecutors to charge people with manslaughter or murder for crimes that result in the death of fetuses. But there’s a difference between counting the murder of a pregnant woman as two crimes\u2014which is permissible under law in many states\u2014and making the protection of a fetus an affirmative defense against a murder charge.
\n[Continued…] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers by Kate Sheppard http:\/\/motherjones.com\/politics\/2011\/02\/south-dakota-hb-1171-legalize-killing-abortion-providers 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\u2014a move that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}