South Dakota may have shelved its controversial “justifiable homicide” bill to protect unborn children, but the trend has already caught on elsewhere, with both Nebraska and Iowa introducing bills with vague language about the use of justifiable force.
The South Dakota bill would have added language to current state law specifying that, in some circumstances, killing someone in defense of an unborn child is “justifiable homicide.” The bill was quickly shelved, in the wake of controversy over its vague language, which, it was argued, could have allowed someone who kills an abortion doctor to use the bill as defense.
Now the Nebraska legislature is considering a bill that would add language to that state’s current justifiable force clauses, expanding the definition of a defensible “third person”:
(a) Third person or person to be protected includes an unborn child; and (b) Unborn child means an individual member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development in utero.
The legislation, LB 232 (readable here in .pdf form), was introduced by State Sen. Mark Christensen, who Nick Baumann and Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones report as saying of his bill: “LB 232 is really nothing more than an attempt to make sure a pregnant woman is not unnecessarily charged with a crime for using force to protect her unborn child from someone who means to bring harm to her unborn children.”
The Iowa legislation is a little murkier: There have been two bills introduced into the Iowa House — House File 7 and House File 153. House File 7 would expand what’s referred to as “justifiable use of reasonable force,” so that someone could not be charged for using 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.”
Unlike the Nebraska bill (and the South Dakota one), HF7 doesn’t specify that a “third party” includes an unborn child. However, as the Iowa Independent points out, if combined with House File 153, the effect is similar. HF153 would establish “that life is valued and protected from the moment of conception, and each life, from that moment, is accorded the same rights and protections guaranteed to all persons by the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Iowa, and the laws of this state.”
Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute also argued to TPM that even by itself HF7 is worrisome: “Even if the wording of the bill doesn’t seem to say, ‘you can kill an abortion provider,’ it’s this climate that we’re in where we’re under attack all the time, that makes anyone very sensitive to any potential threat.”
But, Nash was quick to add, neither bill goes as far as the South Dakota bill: “This is not South Dakota 2. The Iowa bill is very broad. I think a reasonable interpretation would not say that is aimed at abortion providers. I think that somebody who already wants to kill an abortion provider could use anyone of a number of laws to try to defend themselves in a court case.”
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