South Carolina Wants To Extend ‘Stand Your Ground’ To Fetuses
The red state wants to extend stand your ground laws to protect fetuses. Never mind that the state already allows a person to protect oneself from bodily harm, and never mind that, until it is actually born, is part of that “self.”
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.
Critics, on the other hand, believe it’s simply redundant. They also warn that granting more legal protections to fetuses, and defining life as beginning at conception, could end up threatening reproductive rights.
