NRLC Letter in Support of Unborn Victims of Violence Act

The following is excerpted from a letter in support of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act was sent by NRLC to members of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 12, 2001. For more information on the bill, see the article that begins on page one. The Action Request that appears on page 12, and the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/index.html.

RE: Support for the Unborn Victims of Violence (H.R. 503), and opposition to the anticipated "one-victim" substitute

Dear Member of Congress:

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) urges you to support the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R.503), and to oppose the gutting substitute amendment that we anticipate may be offered when the bill reaches the House floor during the weeks ahead.

If a criminal assaults a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and injures or kills the unborn child, common sense recognizes that the criminal has harmed two victims - - the mother and the child. But current federal law does not reflect this commonsense recognition. Federal law (including military law) considers that such an assailant has harmed only one victim. Even if the aggressor has purposefully killed an unborn child who has been named and whose birth is eagerly anticipated, he has not thereby committed a crime under federal law, beyond the crime of the assault on the mother.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act would correct this conspicuous gap in federal law. The bill would establish that if an unborn child is injured or killed during the commission of an already-defined federal crime of violence, then the assailant may be charged with a second offense on behalf of the second victim, the unborn child. For additional information regarding the

provisions of the bill, please see the factsheet titled "Key Points on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act" at  www.nrlc.org Unborn_Victims/keypointsuvva.html. H.R. 503 explicitly states that nothing in the bill "shall be construed to permit the prosecution of any person for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman. . . has been obtained." Nor does the bill pertain to any action by a woman that results in harm to her own unborn child. The bill does not conflict with any U.S. Supreme Court decisions

currently in force. Indeed, the bill is less expansive than the Missouri "Unborn Child" law that the U.S. Supreme Court revived in its 1989 Webster ruling. Moreover, 24 states already enforce criminal laws that explicitly recognize the unborn child as aseparate victim, and all legal challenges to such laws have failed. (See NRLC's factsheet on state unborn victims laws at www.nrlc.org/Whatsnew/sthomicidelaws.htm.) Some opponents have objected to the bill's recognition of the " child in utero" as a member of the human family who can be harmed in a crime. Yet, on July 25, 2000, the House by a vote of 417-0 passed a bill that contained the same definition of "child in utero" and that embodied the same basic legal principle. That bill, the Innocent Child Protection Act, said that no state or federal authority may "carry out a sentence of death on a woman while she carries a child in utero. ... 'child in utero' means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

The principle embodied in the Innocent Child Protection Act was obvious. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act would extend that same principle to the rest of the federal criminal code, recognizing that when a criminal attacks a woman, injuring or killing her and injuring or killing her unborn child, he has claimed two victims.

When the House last dealt with this issue on September 30, 1999, opponents of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act offered a "killer substitute," the Lofgren Amendment or "Motherhood Protection Act." This proposal did not recognize unborn children as crime victims, but rather provided enhanced penalties for the offense of "interruption to the normal course of the pregnancy." Such a " one-victim" amendment would codify the fiction that when a criminal assailant injures a mother and kills her unborn child there has been only a compound injury to the mother, but no loss of any human life. The one-victim substitute would also enact the notion that when a criminal assailant kills a pregnant woman, the assailant should be punished once for killing the mother and then again for depriving her of her "pregnancy" - - but if there is only one victim, it is difficult to see why this would not be a duplicative criminal charge, since legally speaking a woman who has been killed can hardly suffer an additional "loss."

Such internal contradictions are produced by tortured efforts to avoid acknowledging what everyone really knows: these crimes have two victims. In summary, the one- victim substitute amendment is a callous and irrational ideological statement that would gravely trivialize the worth of unborn members of the human family. In NRLC's scorecard of significant congressional votes for 2001, a vote in favor of a one-victim substitute amendment to H.R. 503 will be accurately described as a vote to declare that when a criminal assaults a mother and kills her unborn child, nobody has really died.

We would welcome the opportunity to provide further information on the need for and the legal effects of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. In addition, NRLC's website offers a wealth of material on this subject at www.nrlc.org/ Unborn_Victims/index.html.

Sincerely,

Douglas Johnson

Legislative Director

Patricia Coll

Legislative Assistant