South Dakota proposes open season on abortion providers. No bag limit. Like vermin.

[catsittingstill]

CBS has an article here.

I find the Jensen quote particularly telling.  He supposedly wrote this law to give a pregnant woman the right to defend herself against a "boyfriend" punching her in the abdomen to make her miscarry because he doesn't want to pay child support.  Meaning he supposedly thinks she doesn't have the right to defend herself against physical assault now.

The options here are many and none of them good.  1) He believes that women don't have rights.  2) He believes that women who have had sex don't have rights.  3) He never thinks about the actual human being in the "pregnant woman" scenario at all--she never crosses his mind.  4) He is arguing in bad faith for the purpose of convincing decent but not particularly sharp people to support a law permitting the murder of abortion providers.

His defense is that the law would apply only to people committing illegal acts, and abortion is legal, so abortion providers will be safe (ha ha.)

Here is the text of the actual bill.  The relevant part is that the redefinition (of murder to justifiable homicide) would apply: 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.

That "or" means that the felony part need not apply.

The options here are twofold and neither of them good.  1) He and all twenty-two of the legislators who cosponsored the bill are so completely incompetent at writing basic directions that they are completely unfitted to be allowed to write laws--which will be interpreted from what is written, after all, not what they think they wrote.  2) He and all twenty-two of his cosponsors know perfectly well what they wrote and are arguing in bad faith to convince people who didn't read the actual text of the bill to support a law permitting the murder of abortion providers.

Make no mistake, the Pro-Life terrorists are out there, waiting with their sniper rifles and their bombs.  Since 1993 they have killed eight doctors and tried to kill another seventeen.  They use the "justifiable homicide" defense at their trials (unsuccessfully so far.)  They want you to know they might kill you, and to be afraid.  And many in the larger Pro-Life movement make no bones about publicly supporting Pro-Life terrorism.

If you're feeling kind of tired, having been repeatedly rallied to defend women from having our sexual behavior policed by the State?  That is the intent of the many-pronged conservative assault on women's basic right to be left the heck alone while we get on with our private lives.
 

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

They already tried that part. Passed a law prohibiting abortion in order to send it to the Supreme Court and try to get Roe v. Wade overturned. The voters repealed it by referendum before it got a chance. It's no secret that the legislators are planning to bring it back as soon as they think they might get away with it.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

And why the legislators are more conservative than the people is a very good question.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Because, against any and all evidence, people seem to believe that the conservatives are the people to trust with money. Not necessarily with anything else, but with money and war. And right now, money is the most important thing on most people's minds, and what to do about a world that's chronically at least somewhat at war is a close second. So they want conservatives in place who will balance the budget... but not by cutting anything they use... and they don't want to let the conservatives do anything else stupid while they're in there to balance the budget. Which, for the conservatives, is a no-win proposition, since they cannot balance the budget without cutting things people like or raising taxes like they promised not to do. So they only way they can prove they're doing anything at all is to interfere with people's rights in noisy and dramatic ways... which, fortunately, the people don't like either, and are willing to override their representatives outright on the subject.