Last Friday, as Nick Baumann and I completed our reporting on the anti-abortion group behind a nationwide push to broaden justifiable homicide laws to cover killings in the defense of fetuses, I contacted the organization, Americans United for Life, to request an interview. Specifically, I asked to speak with Denise Burke, AUL's vice president for legal affairs and the author of the model legislation, the Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act, that the group has pressed state lawmakers to introduce. An AUL spokeswoman told me that Burke was travelling, and asked me to submit my questions in writing. So I did. AUL never responded. Instead, the group waited until after the story was published to blast Mother Jones on its website for "dishonest" and "intentionally distorted" reporting, complaining that the "anti-life media once again got their facts wrong."
As we reported, AUL-inspired legislation has recently sparked controversy in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa, with critics claiming that the measures are so expansive that they could potentially invite—if not legalize—the killing of abortion doctors. We write:
That these measures have emerged simultaneously in a handful of states is no coincidence. It's part of a campaign orchestrated by a Washington-based anti-abortion group, which has lobbied state lawmakers to introduce legislation that it calls the "Pregnant Woman's Protection Act" [PDF]. Over the past two years, the group, Americans United for Life, has succeeded in passing versions of this bill in Missouri and Oklahoma. But there's a big difference between those bills and the measures floated recently in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.
While the Oklahoma and Missouri laws specifically cover pregnant women, the latest measures are far more sweeping and would apply to third parties. The bills are so loosely worded, abortion-rights advocates say, that a pregnant woman could seek out an abortion and a boyfriend, husband—or, in some cases, just about anyone—could be justified in using deadly force to stop it.
It's not just anti-abortion groups that think these bills are bad news. Omaha's deputy chief of police recently testified that Nebraska's LB 232 "could be used to incite violence against abortion providers." And a spokesman for South Dakota's Republican governor—a staunch abortion foe—called the version of the bill introduced in that state "a very bad idea."
[Read more in the MoJo blog]
