"At All Times, This Won't be Pleasant" -- Part One of Two

Ordinarily I do not write about cases where a pregnant woman is beaten and/or killed and her unborn baby dies. It is simply too grim.

Take the case of the savage beating of Ohio teenager Kerria Anderson. "At all times, this won't be pleasant," Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Rick Gibson, told the jury on Monday, according to the Cincinnati Inquirer. "You will hear some things you won't enjoy hearing, some things you feel you wish you never heard. But I have no choice."

Likewise, I feel I have no choice but to occasionally write about these horrific cases.

Thanks to the usual suspects, not every state has a law that treats the unborn child as a second victim rather than an appendage to his or her mother. (See end paragraph.)

Moreover, as awful as it to contemplate such barbarism, it is yet another reminder what lessons legalized abortion teach the culture about the [un]worthiness of unborn life.

In 2007, Alfonso Price thought he was the father of Anderson's unborn baby. When she refused to abort, Price (then 15) allegedly recruited a friend, Jebrell Wright, "and the pair kicked and beat the woman in an Over-the-Rhine apartment until the baby died," the Inquirer reported. The baby was stillborn.

Earlier two doctors testified the unborn baby was 29 weeks old. Anderson had named her child, "Precious."

Price and Wright, on trial as adults, are charged with aggravated murder, felonious assault, and kidnapping. They face life in prison, if convicted.

Lawyers for the pair denied their clients had anything to do with the baby's death. The chronology of the case suggests otherwise.

According to the Inquirer, this was not the first time Price assaulted Anderson.

After Anderson told Price she was pregnant in the spring of 2007, "Price's family reveal[ed] that the two were cousins and urged him to encourage Anderson to have an abortion," the Inquirer reported. But the young woman refused.

Prosecutor Gibson told the jury that on June 6, Price kicked and repeatedly punched Anderson. The baby survived. A month later Anderson and Price saw each other at a local park.

"He apologizes to her, says he's sorry, he wants to talk about it," Gibson told the jury. "She starts to give a little bit, he says I know a place we can go talk."

The woman agrees to go to an apartment, Gibson said, where Wright was waiting. Wright punched her, knocking her to the ground, the Inquirer reported. If possible, the story gets worse.

"Her first reaction is to call out to Alfonso for help," Gibson said, according to the Inquirer. "She calls for him. He comes over, and he jumps on her, too."

Gibson said that during the beating the boys repeatedly snarled, " B-----, I told you to get an abortion."

Eventually Anderson escaped, Gibson told the jury. She took a bus to the Hamilton County Justice Center, where she reported the beating and was rushed to University Hospital, the Inquirer reported.

"There was no fetal heartbeat. It was clear to (the doctor) the baby was already dead," Gibson said.

There are 35 states that recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances. Ohio is one of the 25 states that have homicide laws that recognized unborn children as victims throughout the period of pre-natal development. Another 10 have homicide laws that recognize unborn children as victims but only during a part of the period of prenatal development.

Part Two -- Scalia Says Try Democracy