S. Dakota Repubs Want To Legalize Murder of Abortion Doctors

[Logan Darklighter]

SHIT. Shit shit shit shit!!
Ok. I went and looked this up for myself at the South Dakota State Legislative website. There are two versions of the bill there.
THIS version - Apparently the version as it was first introduced on , is VERY clear. It's meant to expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" ONLY by the pregnant woman herself. NOT anyone else.
Here: It's short enough that I think it won't be out of line to just copy paste it (headers and sponsors and other extraneous info stripped. Follow the links if you want to see them) :

        FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to provide that the use of force by a pregnant woman for
the protection of her unborn child is an affirmative defense to prosecutions for certain
crimes.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:

    Section 1. It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution for homicide as defined in § 22-16-1
or assault as defined in § 22-18-1 or 22-18-1.1 that the defendant is a pregnant woman who used
force or deadly force against another to protect her unborn child if:

            (1)    Under the circumstances as the pregnant woman reasonably believes them to be, she
would be justified under § 22-16-35 in using force or deadly force to protect herself
against the unlawful force or unlawful deadly force she reasonably believes to be
threatening her unborn child; and

            (2)    She reasonably believes that her intervention and use of force or deadly force are
immediately necessary to protect her unborn child.

    Section 2. The affirmative defense provided in section 1 of this Act does not apply to:

---

            (1)    Acts committed by anyone other than the pregnant woman;

            (2)    Acts where the pregnant woman would be obligated to retreat, to surrender the
possession of a thing, or to comply with a demand before using force in self-defense.
However, the pregnant woman is not obligated to retreat before using force or deadly
force to protect her unborn child, unless she knows that she can thereby secure the
complete safety of her unborn child; or

            (3)    The defense of human embryos existing outside of a woman's body.

The above is pretty damn clear. It's not meant to be anything but legal protection for a mother who kills someone in self-defense of her baby and herself.
Somewhere between when the bill was first introduced on January 25 and when it passed the Judiciary Committee on Feb 9th. The ENTIRE THING was re-written. I mean NOTHING of the original remains!
Here's the entirety of the New Version circa Feb 9th:
(with headers and sponsers similarly stripped - again - follow the link for the original)

        FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide
for the protection of certain unborn children.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:

    Section 1. That § 22-16-34 be amended to read as follows:

    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.

    Section 2. That § 22-16-35 be amended to read as follows:

    22-16-35. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such
person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn
child of any such enumerated person, 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's VERY ambiguous. In particular the use of the phrase "such person" is unclear. At least to me it is. It sure doesn't parse at all as any kind of normal sentence structure. But I agree whatever the cause, this thing STINKS. The first version was obviously well-intentioned and meant for one specific thing and was pretty tight. This .... mess... is a disaster waiting to happen.
What I was originally trying to convey above (and apparently did a piss-poor job of) was that I doubted that the original bill was intended to be like this. And at first I had not -closely- looked at the wording of the second one.
Now I have. And I was right and I was wrong. I was right that there was more to the story than was in the article and the original bill was not meant to provide cover for the murder of abortion doctors.
But I was wrong to assume simple incompetence. No, this thing was DICKED with.
A part of the header on the second bill that I stripped I want to go back to:
"This bill has been extensively amended (hoghoused) and may no longer be consistent
with the original intention of the sponsor."
Somebody in the legislature knew to leave a note in there about this. I had to look up the term "hoghoused". Here's what appears to be the most relevant definition.
hoghouse attrib. connotating
legislation that has been stripped of its original provisions and
amended to accomplish a different purpose. Also as verb.
One bit of good news. Apparently this bill hasn't actually passed the State House. This cock-up version has only passed a vote in the House Judiciary Committee, where apparently the switch took place. I'm getting the impression here that the multiple deferalls noted in the bill history are delaying tactics to give the other side time to notice and review what's going on. Hopefully this thing gets killed (or amended back to it's original version) before it reaches an actual vote.