Killing Abortion Doctors?I'm beginning to see a sad trend here...I was born in Oklahoma, lived in Arizona as a toddler, lived in Texas as a pre-teen, and was stationed in South Dakota. I currently live in Florida. All states leading the forefront into BizarroAmerika2011!
This is from South Dakota:
An incendiary story by Mother Jones making the rounds on the Web reports that a law being considered in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to apply to killings intended to prevent harm to unborn children. Mother Jones writes that the measure "could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions."
I just had a spirited conversation with the bill's chief sponsor, State Representative Phil Jensen, and he defended the bill, arguing that it would not legalize the killing of abortion doctors.
"It would if abortion was illegal," he told me. "This code only deals with illegal acts. Abortion is legal in this country. This has nothing to do with abortion."
Jensen's defense of the bill, however, is unlikely to make abortion rights advocates any happier, since he seemed to dismiss as irrelevant the possibility that the measure could inflame anti-abortion fanatics to violence.
Jensen insisted that the bill's primary goal is to bring "consistency" to South Dakota criminal code, which already allows people who commit crimes that result in the death of fetuses to be charged with manslaughter. The new measure expands the state's definition of "justifiable homicide" by adding a clause applying it to someone who is "resisting any attempt" to murder of an unborn child or to harm an unborn child in a way likely to result in its death.
When I asked Jensen what the purpose of the law was, if its target isn't abortion providers, he provided the following example:
"Say an ex-boyfriend who happens to be father of a baby doesn't want to pay child support for the next 18 years, and he beats on his ex-girfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby. If she did kill him, it would be justified. She is resisting an effort to murder her unborn child."
Pushed on whether the new measure could inflame the unhinged to kill abortion doctors, as some critics allege, Jensen scoffed. "You can fantasize all you want, but this is pretty clear cut," he said. "Never say never, but if some loony did what you're suggesting, then this law wouldn't apply to them. It wouldn't be justifiable homicide."
Asked whether he was conceding that the law could conceivably encourage such behavior, Jensen pushed back: "You could cross the street and get hit by a car. Could happen, couldn't it?"
South Dakota, if you remember also introduced a bill last week with an individual mandate. Just not what you think. And the irony of the whole story is hilarious!
Screw healthcare! We're gonna make you buy a gun!Several lawmakers in South Dakota, hoping to make an awkward point about health care, have proposed requiring adults in the state to purchase a firearm after turning 21. They don't expect it to pass, but they're hoping to demonstrate how ridiculous they think it is to have officials require the public to purchase things.
To hear these conservatives put it, the notion of an individual mandate is at odds with the American system. The irony, reader C.E. reminded me, is that Congress passed -- and George Washington supported -- a measure in 1792 that required all men eligible for militia service to have a firearm and ammunition, even if they had to buy them, and even if they don't want them. (It came six years before John Adams and Thomas Jefferson supported legislation that required private citizens to pay into a public health-care system.)
