While doctors the one doctor who performs abortions in South Dakota is safe for now, doctors in other states may not be.
The Iowa Independent reports:
Two bills sponsored by Iowa House Republicans could have significant public safety consequences, and perhaps the most unnerving of those potential outcomes would be the justifiable use of deadly force against abortion or family planning providers.When the two pieces of legislation are combined they create a situation where a fertilized egg would be considered a person, and allow for the public execution of those who would threaten such a person.
If passed into law, the two bills — House File 7 and House File 153 — would offer an unprecedented defense opportunity to individuals who stand accused of killing such providers, according to a former prosecutor and law professor at the University of Kansas, and are something that might have very well led to a different outcome in the Kansas trial of the man who shot Dr. George Tiller in a church foyer.
H.F. 153 is basically a version of the personhood amendment in Colorado that failed to pass in November. It states:
... that life is valued and protected from the moment 14 of conception and each life is accorded the same rights and 15 protections guaranteed to all persons by the constitutions of 16 the state of Iowa and the United States, and by the laws of 17 the state.
H.F. 7, meanwhile, would add the following language to the current justifiable homicide law in Iowa:
Reasonable force, including deadly force, may be used and a person has no duty to retreat from any place at which the person has a right to be present, and has the right to stand the person’s ground, and meet force with force, if the person believes reasonable force, including deadly force, is necessary under the circumstances to prevent death or serious injury to oneself or a third party, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
Taken together, these two bills could allow forced-birth terrorists to murder an abortion doctor "to prevent death or serious injury to oneself or a third party," the third party, of course, being a fetus. Which is exactly what Scott Roeder claimed after he gunned down Dr. George Tiller: he was simply acting to protect fetuses.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, State Senator Mark Christensen, a forced-birth extremist who thinks even a rape victim should have to carry her rapist's baby to term, has introduced L.B. 232, a bill "to authorize protection of an unborn child." The bill states that the use of force is "justifiable to protect a third person"—including, specifically, an "unborn child"—if the person believes "intervention is necessary for the protection of such other person." In other words, kill the doctors to save the fetuses if you think you're doing something righteous.
Public outcry succeeded in forcing the South Dakota legislature to indefinitely postpone its "pro-life" bill to legalize murder. Hopefully, the bills in Nebraska and Iowa will suffer the same fate. But with each daily assault on women and their doctors, the message is clear: there is absolutely nothing pro-life about these "pro-lifers" who want women and their doctors to die.