In the news: South Dakota

Back in 2006, South Dakota made the news when its governor signed a bill into law that effectively banned abortions unless the mother's life were in clear danger (note: the linked website isn't accurate in all of its articles, but does give a good overview of South Dakota's HB 1215). The news turned into headlines when the President of the Oglala Sioux declared that, if the law continued to exist, she would open an abortion clinic on Pine Ridge Reservation (read: out of the jurisdiction of South Dakota) to offer women options who otherwise wouldn't have them. The South Dakota law is currently described as being "dead in the water."

Now, unfortunately, South Dakota is back at it- this time with a proposed law that would permit homicide against doctors performing abortions...on the grounds of defense. You read that right. The text of the bill, HB 1171, states that

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.

Again, you read that correctly. Someone who murders a doctor performing an abortion, under this law, could legitimately claim "defense of the unborn" in the same way one could claim self-defense in other circumstances.

I'll repeat here what I've said before in this blog: I'm wholeheartedly in favour of abortion rights. I also understand that not everyone is. The utter wrongness of South Dakota's proposed law, however, isn't whether or not it favours abortion rights. It's that it favours- no, scratch that- legalizes the murder of a person who is performing an important and, in many ways life-saving, procedure. Theoretically, someone could extend the law to protect themselves if they murder the person who is pregnant and requests the abortion- after all, they're technically attempting "to harm the unborn child" by seeking the procedure. Could such a loophole, if the law passes, lead to the acceptance of vigilantes who believe it's acceptable to murder a person to punish them for an attempted abortion?

Regardless if the law would be extended to cover such instances...we need to act to discourage its passage.