I'm only a few miles away from the Dakotas — if HB1171 passes, I could put on some hospital scrubs (camouflage, you know), lurk quietly in a hospital, and when some ob-gyn pokes his or her head out, BAM, justifiable homicide.
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That § 22-16-34 be amended to read as follows:
22-16-34. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such person, or to harm the unborn child of such person in a manner and to a degree likely to result in the death of the unborn child, or to commit any felony upon him or her, or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is.
Section 2. That § 22-16-35 be amended to read as follows:
22-16-35. 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.
They've still got to amend this thing, though. There's no mention of a season or of bag limits.
As you might guess, this abomination of a law is the product of Republican legislators and their crazy far-right-wing allies.
The 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"--a term used in South Dakota for heavily amending legislation in committee--in a little-noticed hearing. A parade of right-wing groups—the 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—all testified in favor of the amended version of the law.
Read the rest. South Dakota already has the most indefensibly restrictive set of abortion laws in the country, and last I heard, had no abortion doctors — they rely on a very few Minnesota doctors who regularly fly in to a few locations to deliver essential services. Now the South Dakota legislature is doing even more to discourage responsible reproductive health and is doing further harm to women in the state.
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