Nick Baumann and Daniel Schulman report that Nebraska state Sen. Mark Christensen has proposed a "self-defense bill" nearly identical to the one recently shelved in South Dakota, except that this version would allow any third party to kill someone in defense of a fetus, as opposed to just a family member. Like South Dakota Rep. Phil Jensen, Christensen is also an advocate of laws that would ban the use of Islamic law in U.S. courts.
Christensen says his bill is not meant to legalize the killing of abortion providers but merely to provide legal protection for pregnant women who act in self-defense. Anything else is just a coincidence.
Not everyone is sure that the law's potential use in a case of abortion-related murder was unintentional. "If they wanted it narrow, they should have drafted it that way, and they did not," Alan Peterson, a lobbyist with the ACLU of Nebraska who testified at the hearing, told Mother Jones. "So I have reasonable suspicion that the intent was at least to create a possible broad defense for attacks on abortion providers."
"I don't know how anyone knows my intent," Christensen fired back in an interview with Mother Jones.
Of course Nebraska, like South Dakota, already has a law on the books that allows people to defend themselves when "force is necessary to protect himself against death or serious bodily harm." So why do they need a new law?
Christensen and proponents of his bill, including the anti-abortion groups Americans United for Life and Family First, argue that concerns that the measure would legalize violence against abortion providers are overblown. They say that since abortions are legal in Nebraska, the killing of an abortion doctor would not be permissible under Christensen's law. (Proponents of South Dakota's bill made a similar case.) But Peterson disputed this interpretation. He said the existing self-defense statute that Christensen's bill would amend is "not limited to situations where something is going on that's unlawful. It says the person who claims the defense believes that there's something unlawful. That's a subjective standard." A standard, he added, that might allow the killer of an abortion provider to use Christensen's law, if passed, to get away with murder.
Killers of abortion providers have previously invoked these sorts of legal rationales when prosecuted. Scott Roeder did it after murdering Dr. George Tiller. Paul Hill did it after killing Dr. John Britton and James Barrett. Extreme anti-abortion activists have long held that the killing of abortion providers is justifiable homicide; it's hard to imagine that the lawmakers proposing such laws are unaware of that history and that it's just a coincidence that they are trying to get language on the books that could be used to provide legal cover for people who kill abortion providers after the fact.
