"Stand Your Ground" compared to Anti-choice laws?

[lostnfound]

Another great inconsistency in the GOP supposed “pro-life” policies: compare the too-popular “Stand Your Ground” laws to anti-choice laws.

Such a [stand your ground] law typically states that an individual has no duty to retreat from any place where they have a lawful right to be (though this varies from state to state) and that they may use any level of force if they reasonably believe the threat rises to the level of being an imminent and immediate threat of serious bodily harm and/or death.

The castle doctrine is a common law doctrine stating that persons have no duty to retreat in their home, or "castle", and may use reasonable force, including deadly force, to defend their property, person or another.

....At common law, self-defense claims are not valid if the defendant could have safely retreated from danger (duty to retreat). The castle doctrine is an exception to this. It gives immunity from liability to individuals who acted in self-defense in the home even if they could have safely retreated from the threat and failed to do so.

Note that the castle doctrine applies even when you are only defending property — if an unarmed teenager is stealing my TV, I can shoot to kill to protect my property.

A woman’s mental health, physical freedom, bodily autonomy and financial security are all apparently less valuable than property.

Suppose you’re in a park walking your dog and every night two bullies show up and tell you to leave. Instead of leaving, one night you can pull out a gun and shoot them, for interfering with your feeling of safety in a “place where you have a lawful right to be”. Basically you were too scared to stay, and you could have left, but you were legally allowed to shoot rather than retreat? Your right to remain in that public park is worth more the lives of the bullies you just shot. Your right simply to OCCUPY A PUBLIC SPACE is presumably worth more than a human life of a teenager or adult.

But a woman facing a difficult pregnancy — maybe she even has multiples, like quadruplets? — has no recourse. Maybe she will need to stay flat on her back fro three months and risk losing her job and have to hire someone to take care of her children while she is pregnant. Maybe every time she is pregnant her husband has physically abused her (it’s amazingly common). Maybe she’s already got severe psychological problems, and/or she is taking teratogenic medicines, or maybe she has late stage terminal cancer, or she’s only 14. Maybe she’s already got a kid with severe medical conditions and another who is healthy, and this third one will take away the last bit of strength she has left after trying to divide her time between the healthy one and the unhealthy one. The stress has shortened her life.

The stress of DOES shorten one’s life, for many mothers, I suspect — not only during birth, but for stress, or lack of time to exercise, or lack of self-care, neglecting one’s own health for the sake of the kids. So why no “stand your ground”? Is being childless “a place that you have a right to be”? Is a woman’s freedom to walk around for the next 9 months worth more than your TV? Is a woman’s body less of a “castle” than a house made of brick or wood and drywall?

Who decides the probability that a woman will die from a high-risk pregnancy? A team of doctors, or just one? An insurance company? “Death panels”?

Meanwhile, the right of corporations to disregard the lives lost due to environmental risks of toxic chemicals they produce is being expanded. Let’s bring back asbestos, because some one-percenters can make money on it. Pesticides, no problem. Fine particulates, no problem. The messages from the “Greedy One Percenters” — the GOP — is:

Don’t make ME spend money to save hurricane victims in Perth Rico, or uninsured people, or 9-11 firefighters, or victims of food-borne illness.
Don’t make ME retreat from a public space if I can just shoot someone who threatens me.

But no cost and no burden is too great for nameless pregnant women to bear, to ensure that their little embryos survive.

Does the GOP place much value on embryos, when they are calculating the effects of pesticides, air pollution, or lack of health care? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

[Hela]

1. I wish I could recommend this more than once.

So happy to read this — I’ve been making this exact same argument to my family and friends.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Excellent points. Maybe the first woman charged with murder as the result

of an abortion can claim a 'stand your ground' defense.

[lostnfound]

4. It's the doctors that do it who would be prosecuted. Ironically, gun merchants are protected.

A further contrast. A person who helps a woman get an abortion is the one who would be punished by up to 99 years.

There are special laws to protect those that make and sell guns.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. All too true.