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Abortion Could Lead to First Degree Murder Charges in South Dakota Lawyer Warns

By Hilary White 

PIERRE, July 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A lawyer in South Dakota is warning doctors that they may face charges of first-degree murder if they attempt to abort children in that state.
 
The Associated Press reports that an attorney for the state medical association, Dave Gerdes, has circulated a memo to doctors saying that should the recently passed ban on abortion be combined with changes to a homicide statute, doctors committing abortions could be prosecuted for murder.

"It is at least possible that a prosecutor or a court will decide that a physician performing a procedure qualifying as an abortion under the language of the new statute can be prosecuted for first-degree murder,” Gerdes wrote in the memo. 

The South Dakota legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that prohibits all abortion in the state except in those cases where continuing a pregnancy would pose a medical threat to the woman’s life. The law would make abortion a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment, and contains none of the usual exceptions for “health” or children conceived through rape or incest. Although Governor Mike Rounds signed the bill into law in March, it is still awaiting the outcome of a public referendum in November before it can come into effect.
 
In 2005, the state Legislature also revised the state criminal code modifying the definition of homicide constituting first-degree murder to include the premeditated, unlawful killing of “any unborn child.” Gerdes claims that the combination of these two legal changes could result in more serious charges against doctors who kill unborn children in South Dakota.
 
Rep. Roger Hunt, R-Brandon, the abortion ban’s sponsor, refuted Gerdes’ claim saying the memo was “kind of a biased, incomplete view of the subject.”
 
Hunt told AP that Gerdes was proposing an unlikely worst-case scenario. He said that first-degree murder, which carries the death penalty in South Dakota, would not be lightly undertaken against doctors by the state’s attorneys.
 
“I do know that when you take the life of a human being in our society, every state's attorney is going to look at all potential charges - murder all the way down to manslaughter and aggravated assault," said Hunt.
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
 
Abortion Ban Signed into Law by South Dakota Governor
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06030603.html
 
South Dakota Abortion Ban Delayed: Will Go to Public Vote
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062004.html

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