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this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Where an individual reasonably believes an attacker poses a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, any person is justified in using any level of force - up to and including lethal force - necessary to stop the attack.
If the claims made in this article are accurate (and they very well might not be), then In setting the standard of care at the point where a person reasonably fears "grievous injury or near-certain death", the courts may have inadvertently justified the use of force in self-defense and/or defense of others against any executive using the power of their office to attack an individual.
Indeed, language like this puts a bullseye on healthcare professionals that already have/had one because of COVID and the fascists spreading wild conspiracy theories. This is almost a 2 birds with one stone stroke for them, you make abortion something any medical professional wants to distance themself from out of fear of their own life, but you also help undermine the whole medical field by would-be parents afraid to go to a hospital with complications as they may not come back out (or having suffered irreversible health effects).
While this would in theory work for justifying the actions of the mother it does nothing to help enable medical professionals in providing care. The court ruling basically tells all medical professionals that they may not perform abortions for any reason. It's a death sentence pure and simple and now the hospitals are only allowed to sit back and watch.
Why wouldn’t health care professionals be able to assist?
In Texas, the Castle Doctrine is codified under the Texas Penal Code, specifically in sections 9.31, 9.32, and 9.33. Key provision for this would be: The use of deadly force is justifiable if the individual reasonably believes it is necessary to protect themselves or someone else from imminent death or serious bodily injury, or to prevent the commission of a violent crime such as aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, or robbery.
You could shoot me in Texas if I were robbing the gas station store with a deadly weapon, I would think that OPs argument that a health care professional could help and cite the Castle Doctrine as a defense.
I'll fully admit that I was unaware of the Texas Castle Doctrine law. That would in fact be an interesting angle to pursue if hospitals had a backbone. But I will stick by my opinion that hospitals will refuse to treat these women as the laws stand now because they will never risk any chance at litigation to save a mother's life.
Do the abortion at home yourself under Castle Doctrine. (I'm not actually advocating this, but it seems to be what Texas wants)
I think the court just made a legal contradiction. The hospital can't perform an abortion until the woman is already in severe harm -- but by castle doctrine they can also use deadly force to protect her from severe harm.
This puts Republicans in a hilarious position. The contradiction has to be resolved, and no matter how they do it, they lose:
The use of deadly force to prevent some else from severe harm is illegal. You can no longer shoot someone who you think poses harm. Gun nuts are furious.
The hospital can perform an abortion without the woman already suffering.
You just can't do it, okay?! This implies abortion is not "deadly force", which has all sorts of implications against abortion laws. If it isn't deadly force, there's no reason it should prohibited, like any other well founded medical practice.
They could always try to force this outside of the legal framework, but if they ignore the law, there's no reason to follow the law. They also risk reform, which seems increasingly likely.
Republicans fucked around with overturning Roe, and they're going to keep finding out until it's back as a national law.
I agree, the real life metrics would win out. Some other people have pointed out it’s not all about that one clause either.
Go watch more yewtu.be videos about self defense. It always comes down to the portion of the statute about reason/reasonably/reasonable person. Any judge can instruct the jury on how X law makes a line of reasoning unreasonable. Even more likely: the jury in Texas anywhere outside of the big cities and their influence radii will decide that your reasoning is unreasonable.
You have to convince ~three/four sets of people to use self defense and get away with it: 1.) The initial bystanders/crowd. If any of them thinks what you did was wrong and has some courage, you may have a bad time. 2.) The cops. If they think you weren't reasonable, you will be arrested and charged. 3.) The court/jury. Your argument might be a very logical A therefore B, I met A, therefore B, but that doesn't mean the judge and jury will believe it, or not refute it otherwise. 4.) The general public. Beating the court case helps, as most people are content to mesh into our legal society and it's rulings, but just as notable figures (think congressmen and such) sometimes get targeted by people who disagree with them, so might you. And remember that Texas has a lot of crazies, and they're probably at least in your neighborhood, if not next-door.
Who is using unlawful force against the pregnant person here?
I want to stress that my focus is on the insane consequences of this court's ruling, and how it potentially drags the abortion issue into the realm of self defense. I am not advocating that the appropriate solution to this problem is force, let alone deadly force. This problem should be rectified by either the state or federal legislature, or the Supreme Court reversing the 5th circuit's decision. We should not need to resort to the laws governing use of force to resolve this problem.
The only ways the law has of authorizing lethal force to be used against her are through warfare, defensive force, and the death penalty. She is not a combatant, so warfare is out. Nor has she has not been convicted of a particularly heinous crime. With the exception of the fetus, none of the other people involved are imperiled, so are not justified in using defensive force against her. The fetus is imperiled, but by its own failure to thrive, not from any act of the mother. The fetus is imperiling the life of the mother without a legal justification to do so.
The source of the criminal act against her is either the fetus trying to kill her, or the doctors refusing to treat her, or the threats of punishment against the medical personnel trying to save her.
If it is the fetus causing the threat, the doctors are free to use lethal force to stop it as soon as she reasonably believes her life is in danger, and no alternative to force exists. This is the "imminent" standard. "Imminent" does not refer to a specific period of time, but to the causal chain. Being tied to active train tracks is an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm, even if there won't be a train passing by for another day. Upon finding yourself tied to the tracks, and only able to escape by using deadly force, you (and anyone acting on your behalf) are justified in using force now; you (and anyone else) are not obligated to wait until the train is in sight before acting.
In refusing to help her, the doctors and the executive agent are arguably attempting to commit a "depraved heart murder"; they are arguably engaging in "depraved indifference to human life" by observing the threat against her, being able to act, but refusing to act. Should she survive that "threat" against her life, their act of refusal still arguably constitutes "reckless endangerment".
A person reasonably believed to be facing a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm justifies the use of any level of force, up to and including lethal force, they reasonably believe is necessary to stop that threat. Under self defense standards, any person would be justified in using force (or threat of force) against either the executive agent or the doctor, if they reasonably believed that use of force necessary to stop the harmful act.
Again, I am not advocating threats against the executive agent or the doctor. I am attempting to demonstrate the insanity of this ruling. As it currently stands before its inevitable appeal, this issue appears to have been thrown into the realm of defensive force.
You haven't answered the question. Texas Law circumscribes when self defence is a justification for the use of lethal force, and the situation is laid out as above: there must be someone who is or is believed to be about to unlawfully use force against the person being protected.
The foetus is not "trying" to kill the mother, and even if it were doing so, no court or reasonable person would describe it as an "unlawful use of force." It's just growing, presumably in a way harmful to the mother's life. Growing naturally is not "using force" and there's no law against it, so even if it were it wouldn't be unlawful.
Doctors, by declining medical care, are not using force, and unless there is a statute requiring them to provide care, also wouldn't be doing so unlawfully. If there were such a statute, it and the abortion ban would be in conflict, which is a more realistic way the ban might be struck down in the courts.
In the case at hand the likelihood of the mother actually dying should in fact be low - not almost certain as would be required for a charge of depraved heart murder.
You are talking in general terms about self defence standards instead of the text of the law on Texas' books.
The conservative judges would have quite the quandary should a dying woman shoot her ectopic fetus.