If you had any doubt that we are moving toward a hate-filled, vigilante society, you now have an unequivocal answer. Scott Roeder claimed justifiable homicide in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in his church vestibule. Now, just two days after a female member of the Minuteman militia was convicted of murdering two innocent people–including a 9-year-old girl–while attempting to murder another, South Dakota legislators have introduced legislation that could de-criminalize the shooting of doctors, nurses, patients and volunteers at clinics providing abortion care.

Yup. You read that right. Elected officials–all of whom supposedly swore to uphold the law–are now encouraging people to literally take the law–as they understand it–into their own gun-owning hands.

The South Dakota bill, House Bill 1171 (the language of which is below), is an outgrowth of legislation that criminalizes harm to fetuses, a back-door route used by anti-choice forces for the past decade to criminalize abortion by conferring the rights of personhood on a fetus.

HB 1171 is one of three new bills being considered by the South Dakota legislature which seems, in ‘representing the people,’ to have completely forgotten that those same South Dakotans have repeatedly rejected such measures at the ballot box. The other two […]