For what it’s worth, South Dakota already has a law on the books that covers killing a fetus.
This covers the situation where somebody does something like stabbing a pregnant woman in the stomach, killing her fetus but not her. (Such a crime would alos be covered by other laws as well.)
As others have noted, most actions which would be likely to kill a fetus would also be a threat to the woman. This proposal seems to close the loophole on the unlikely scenario that somebody was attempting to perform a nonconsentual abortion.
I guess if there was a rash of cases of people “accidentally” pushing their pregnant wives, daughters or girlfriends down stairs in an attempt to cause the end of an inconvenient pregnancy, or surreptitiously feeding them mifepristone or other abortifacients… maybe this legislation or something like it would be useful.
In a “normal” self defense case could you kill your attacker for any of that?
I mean self defense is defense against imminent injury/death.
Once it is a done deal it is retaliation.
The person may deserve the retaliation but as a legal matter I am thinking none of that allows the person to turn around and kill the other person. You need to kill them as they try to push you down the stairs.
Well, to give some thought to a more “imminent” hypothetical…
A boyfriend is charging at his pregnant teen girlfriend, who has a staircase behind her… the father of the girl shoots the boyfriend…
I dunno, it seems to me that would be covered under conventional justifiable homicide whether she was pregnant or not. I suppose if the father shot the boyfriend as he was force-feeding the girl RU-486…
I tried to construe the bill in the Pit thread so it didn’t legalize the killing of abortion providers by the rather odd selection of persons in interest listed. I couldn’t. I haven’t seen any evidence that the bill’s sponsors intend it to be read that way.
On the other hand, all of them are fairly big on outlawing abortion.
It is to effectively end abortions in the state without running afoul of pesky constitutional restrictions that say you cannot outlaw abortions.
Instead energize the nutjobs and let health providers decide it’s not worth risking their life.
The SD legislature has found a brilliant loophole in constitutional law. Open the door for the crazy contingent (and there is one on every side of most everything) to enforce the things you legally can’t via terror/threat of death.
Thinking on it this is brilliant.
No one has pondered whether Scalia & Company would deem this constitutional though. I’ve thought about it (admittedly not a lawyer/con-law expert) and I’m stymied.
On what basis would he uphold the killing of someone without due process? Abortion is legal. A doctor performing an abortion is not committing an illegal act.
*“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.” *
See the “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” part?
“Scalia & Company” is my snarky way of saying “The Supreme Court” (the “& Company” part indicates I mean more than just Scalia).
So while “he” may have an opinion, one that certainly counts, I was asking for opinions on how the court would rule.
The “this” in my post was the idea that Dopers had already kicked around in the thread that since abortion is legal there is no issue. However, as noted in my post (and others before me), the law sidesteps the issue of abortion being legal and makes it ok to kill someone who will “harm the unborn”. That leaves a whole new door wide open since, definitionally, a person performing an abortion is harming the unborn.
Sure. Alarmed at the prospect of 18 years of child support, the man responsible for an unwanted pregnancy wants his erstwhile girlfriend to have an abortion; she refuses and insists on keeping the baby.
So he punches her in the stomach with the intent to cause a miscarriage.
Punching a person in the stomach is a felony, isn’t it? And in particular, I would think attempting to induce an abortion in a person outside of a hospital is sufficiently life threatening to count as a felony even if the punch itself wouldn’t necessarily be.
Just so we’re clear, Bricker, do you disagree that there are only two possibilities here? Those being, (1) the bill is either poorly drafted, or (2) is in fact an attempt to create the exact conditions that the article linked in the OP suggests?
But from an earlier post, Peggy’s “or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant” could use deadly force. I realize that doesn’t parse so well, but wanted to use the wording of the law.
Yes. But that’s the language from 22-16-35. villa’s point was that my scenario was covered by 22-16-34, so 22-16-35 was cumulative in effect. I pointed out, and villa then agreed, that 22-16-34 permits defense of oneself; 22-16-35 permits defense of others.