South Carolina Wants Fetuses to Stand Their Ground
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In an earth-shattering breakthrough, senators in Columbia, S.C., sent a gun-nut particle colliding into an abortion-nut particle, and the two fused together in a brilliant release of energy to produce a new, hitherto unknown super-heavy mass of conservative stupidity.
ThinkProgress reports that the new experiment in right-wing fusion is to expand the Palmetto State's Stand Your Ground law so that certain citizensnamely, mommies to becan shoot to kill anyone who threatens their fetus:
The proposal would grant pregnant women protection from prosecution if they were defending their "unborn children," defined as "the offspring of human beings from conception until birth."
Proponents of the legislation claim that it's necessary because the state's current Stand Your Ground law isn't broad enough. Although South Carolina already authorizes deadly force to protect against "imminent peril of death or great bodily injury," some Republican lawmakers argue that doesn't go far enough to protect pregnant women from all of the physical attacks that may harm their fetus, like being punched in the stomach.
You could argue that any possible attack on the life of a gestating fetus is an attack on the life of the woman bearing the fruit-filled womb, and that's already covered. And apparently the GOP response to you is that the law doesn't cover gut-punches, which they assume to be fatal to fetuses, although that's debatable. The point is, now we need a law to permit deadly force against people who appear prepared to give pregnant women gut-punches.
ThinkProgress notes that this measurewhich was advanced by a state Senate committee yesterdayis part of a nationwide trend by anti-abortion activists to codify "fetal homicide" as a crime, because it's a step closer to getting broader cultural acceptance for the idea that abortion is murder.
Which is all well and good, except that South Carolina isn't talking about criminalizing fetus-killin': It's talking about legalizing the killing of alleged fetus-threateners, which is a pretty bizarre cause for a group with a name like Americans United for Life.
There are also weird moral philosophy implications, such as: If a pregnant woman endangers herself or her fetus, should she kill herself to stop it? Apparently she'd be legally justified. Conundrum!
On the other hand, maybe it's not a conundrum. One conservative politician thought this one through a long time ago:
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