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COLUMBIA - A pregnant woman will have the right to use deadly force to protect her unborn child, if a bill making its way through the Senate becomes law.

The Pregnant Women's Protection Law passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 3-2 vote, with Senators Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, and Karl Allen, D-Greenville, dissenting. The bill aims to allow for a woman to use whatever force necessary if she fears a person is trying to cause her or her unborn child harm.

Critics of the measure, however, argued the law was redundant and unnecessary. They echoed each other's words when standing before the committee, arguing South Carolina already has one of the broadest stand your ground laws in the country and that adding the pregnant women's law was not needed.

Hutto questioned what the bill addressed that wasn't already in state law and argued a mother already has the authority to stand her ground whether she's pregnant or not.

"You're only authorizing the mother to defend the child," Hutto said. "She already has that right."

Under current law, anyone can stand their ground without the duty to retreat if the person "reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person or to prevent the commission of a violent crime."

But Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, said sometimes these crimes happen when the boyfriend is trying to harm the unborn child and not necessarily the mother. He introduced an amendment - which passed 3-2, also with Hutto and Allen dissenting - to the state's stand your ground law that would add the clause "to include a pregnant woman protecting her unborn child."

"I can envision a factual situation where an assault. really kills the unborn child, does not rise to the level of great bodily injury, but yet can be effective in killing the unborn child," Campsen said.

Sen. Greg Hembree, R-North Myrtle Beach, also argued in favor of the measure, adding the bill would close a loophole in the law that doesn't give women the right to defend an unborn child from great bodily harm. He said a woman would not be immune from prosecution just by telling police she was "trying to protect my baby."

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Stand your ground expansion bill aimed at protecting unborn children advances

In a strange combination of two hot-button, polarizing political issues, South Carolina may expand its current Stand Your Ground law to permit the use of deadly force to protect a fetus.

The expansion of the law, referred to as the Pregnant Womens Protection Act, was approved 3-2 by a state Senate committee on Thursday, although its currently unclear how far the legislation is going to progress. The law would allow pregnant women to use deadly force to protect unborn children beginning at conception.

Although the legislation specifically references pregnant women and fetuses, opponents argue that the expansion of the law would be no different than the states current Stand Your Ground law. If a pregnant woman is threatened, her unborn child is automatically threatened as well, opponents argue. ThinkProgress suggests that the new legislation is simply an effort to advance the classification of unborn fetuses as personhood according to state law.

While the Senate committee works to expand the law, other state politicians are looking to repeal it. According to the Huffington Post, Rep. Harold Mitchell (D) introduced legislation in March that would repeal South Carolinas Stand Your Ground law.

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South Carolina May Expand "Stand Your Ground Law" To Protect Fetuses

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In an earth-shattering breakthrough, senators in Columbia, S.C., sent a gun-nut particle colliding into an abortion-nut particle, and the two fused together in a brilliant release of energy to produce a new, hitherto unknown super-heavy mass of conservative stupidity.

ThinkProgress reports that the new experiment in right-wing fusion is to expand the Palmetto State's Stand Your Ground law so that certain citizensnamely, mommies to becan shoot to kill anyone who threatens their fetus:

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.

You could argue that any possible attack on the life of a gestating fetus is an attack on the life of the woman bearing the fruit-filled womb, and that's already covered. And apparently the GOP response to you is that the law doesn't cover gut-punches, which they assume to be fatal to fetuses, although that's debatable. The point is, now we need a law to permit deadly force against people who appear prepared to give pregnant women gut-punches.

ThinkProgress notes that this measurewhich was advanced by a state Senate committee yesterdayis part of a nationwide trend by anti-abortion activists to codify "fetal homicide" as a crime, because it's a step closer to getting broader cultural acceptance for the idea that abortion is murder.

Which is all well and good, except that South Carolina isn't talking about criminalizing fetus-killin': It's talking about legalizing the killing of alleged fetus-threateners, which is a pretty bizarre cause for a group with a name like Americans United for Life.

There are also weird moral philosophy implications, such as: If a pregnant woman endangers herself or her fetus, should she kill herself to stop it? Apparently she'd be legally justified. Conundrum!

On the other hand, maybe it's not a conundrum. One conservative politician thought this one through a long time ago:

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South Carolina Wants Fetuses to Stand Their Ground

Last month, Michael Dunn was convicted of attempted murder, after firing several rounds into an SUV of young black men. Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old, was killed in the incident. Dunn is 47, and he is white. Dunn invoked the "Stand Your Ground Law" to defend his actions, and the jury was deadlocked on whether to charge him for Davis's murder. He'll face a retrial this summer.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a correspondent for The Atlantic had this to say on the trial:

A very wise man wrote me the other day and said he would have been happier if Dunn had been convicted of first-degree murder, gotten 15 years, and then was released to try to pick up the pieces of his life. And I think that really gets to the point. This is not about the ruination of white peopleindividual or collective. This is about coping with a heritage of regarding black people as subhuman.

Coates has been one of the foremost voices on issues of race, politics, and the law for the past decade. Tonight, he'll be giving the Robert R. Wilson lecture at Duke University on the topic of racism as a cultural heritage.

Coates sat down to talk with Phoebe Judge a few hours before his talk. They met in the lobby of the Washington Duke Inn, adjacent the school.

"Anywhere you look at domestic policy in this country, you can find it being accomplished, regrettably, on the basis of racism," Coates said. Coates and Judge talked about domestic cotton production, black exclusion from social security, and about redlining in the mid-20th century. "This is our heritage and you can't get away from it."

"The expectation that our citizens will make decisions outside of our heritage, our history, is deeply bizarre."

This idea, that racism is sewed into the very foundation of this country, is what makes decisions like that in the Jordan Davis case so resonant, Coates said.

"The expectation is that you will get a jury of people who will go into a room, and somehow they will exist outside of America. Or that laws will be past outside of America. As if who you are and your history don't affect anything."

Coates hopes people will walk away from his lecture at Duke with a realistic understanding of the country that we live in. He wants to turn the conversation away from the moral failing of African Americans and towards, "the total and utter destruction of white supremacy."

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On Racism: 'This Is Our Heritage. You Can't Get Away From It' | WUNC

Stand, dont deliver

Not content to accidentally shoot itself in the face while sitting at a bar or attending class, the National Rifle Association managed to push a Trojan Horse of a bill through both the state House and Senate last week that will effectively expand the ridiculous castle-doctrine-turned-shoot-everyone Stand Your Ground law in the state. What was once known as the warning shot bill intended to even the playing field for people like abused Florida wife Marissa Alexander, who is still fighting an extensive prison sentence for shooting a gun into the air as opposed to, say, gunshow enthusiast and jackass hero George Zimmerman, who walks free has now grown to include some festive amendments.

How could such an amazing bill get even better, you might ask? Well, for one, it means that Stand Your Ground remains deeply enshrined in our unfair legal system, and continues to be overused in defense cases Florida has had 237 Stand Your Ground defenses since 2005, according to the Tampa Bay Times, and the majority of those cases are determined to be justified, even in cases where its a child who dies, caught in the crossfire of a drug deal gone bad.

But wait! Theres more! The newly refashioned Stand Your Ground(er) will now make all Stand Your Ground cases secret, especially from the media that loves to talk about how this law is ruining our state. The Dream Defenders the brave folks who held a monthlong sit-in at the Capitol just to get the governors attention on the issue released a statement about the updated legislation on April 4. They are, shall we say, not happy.

As citizens across Florida have demanded the repeal of the Stand Your Ground law, we are disappointed to see that the Florida Legislature has done quite the opposite, said Ciara Taylor, political director for the Dream Defenders. Todays vote shows that our legislators have ignored our calls and have instead chosen to double down on this dangerous law that will continue to claim the lives of innocent, unarmed victims. We will remember the names of those who voted in favor of this law today they will be on the lips of officers who explain to mothers why their children never make it home, in funeral packets of churches all across the South, and, most importantly, in the hands of Florida voters on Election Day in November.

Guns down. Knives out.

>Email Billy Manes

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Florida legislature expands Stand Your Ground