With boost from Sharon Rocha, Texas enacts strong unborn victims bill

Unborn Victims of Violence Act Continues to Gain Momentum in Congress, As Pro-Abortion Groups Resist

WASHINGTON (June 6, 2003) - - As public attention remains riveted on the unfolding story of the murder of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner in California, momentum continues to build in Washington for congressional action on landmark legislation to allow justice to be done on behalf of unborn victims of violence.

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is pushing for congressional approval of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (S. 1019, H.R. 1997), a bill to recognize as legal crime victims unborn children who are injured or killed during the commission of violent federal crimes.

NRLC helped originate the legislation in 1999, and was instrumental in winning approval of the bill in the House of Representatives in 1999 and again in 2001. The Senate never took up the issue, however, because of strong opposition from pro-abortion groups such as NARAL, the ACLU, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which insist that the law must never recognize unborn children as crime victims.

The chief sponsors of the current bill are Senator Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) (S. 1019) and Congresswoman Melissa Hart (R-Pa.) (H.R. 1997).

Senate Republican leaders would like to bring the bill to the floor this summer, but pro-abortion senators could employ a filibuster or other obstructionist tactics, such as offering entire bills on unrelated subjects as amendments.

As of June 6, 33 senators have sponsored or cosponsored the bill, all Republicans. (The list is available at the Legislative Action Center on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.) But dozens of senators have not yet stated a position on the unborn victims issue, on which the Senate has never voted before.

A few senators have made public statements implying that they do not support the bill. For example, in a letter to constituents, Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ar.) wrote, "I do not feel it is necessary to create a separate and unprecedented legal status for fetuses. . ." Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) wrote, "I do not, however, believe that the fetus (regardless of term) ought to be considered by the law as a separate human being from the mother."

Two Polls

A scientific poll conducted by Newsweek in late May found that 84% believe that prosecutors should be able to bring a homicide charge on behalf of a fetus killed in the womb.

That total includes a clear majority - - 56% of the adult population - - who believe such a charge should apply at any point during pregnancy, and another 28% would apply it after the baby is "viable" (i.e., of sufficient lung development to survive outside the mother).

Only 9% said that a homicide charge should never be allowed on behalf of a fetus.

"The poll shows that a majority of Americans believe that the law should recognize that an unborn child can be a murder victim at any point during his or her prenatal development," commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. "In stark contrast, the position that pro-abortion groups have demanded that lawmakers adopt - - that the law must never recognize an unborn child as a crime victim - - is supported by nine percent (9%) in this poll."

A national Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released on April 25 also found that 84% of registered voters nationwide said that a double homicide charge is appropriate in the Peterson case, while only 7% said that a single homicide charge is appropriate.

State Laws

Twenty-seven states already have laws that recognize unborn children as legal crime victims. This number includes 14 states that apply the "two-victim principle" throughout the baby's prenatal development, and 13 that apply the protection at some specified point during pregnancy (which varies from state to state).

In addition, in late May the Texas legislature approved a comprehensive unborn victims bill, the Prenatal Protection Act.

Texas Right to Life, the state NRLC affiliate, had been pushing for enactment of the bill since 1999, but it had been blocked by pro-abortion groups. The measure got a strong boost on May 22 in the form of a letter to legislators from Sharon Rocha, the mother of Laci Peterson and grandmother of Conner Peterson.

"I urge every representative to support this bill, in the interests of true justice," Sharon Rocha wrote. "This bill is necessary to ensure that in the future, no mother who loses her baby in a criminal attack is later told by state authorities, 'We are sorry, but nobody died in that crime.' It is necessary to prevent any surviving grandparent, such as myself, from being told, 'In the eyes of the law, you lost a daughter, but not a grandson.'"

"The letter had a huge emotional impact that favorably affected the floor debate on the bill," Joe Kral, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, told NRL News. The House rejected two crippling amendments by overwhelming margins, and gave final approval to the bill on a vote of 112-15. Gov. Rick Perry (R) is expected to sign the bill into law.

(A reproduction of the entire letter appears on page 32.)

On May 5, Rocha and other surviving family members sent a letter to the lead sponsors of the federal bill, urging passage of the federal bill, which they asked to be named "Laci and Conner's Law," which subsequently was incorporated as an alternative title into the text of H.R. 1997. (The May 5 letter is reproduced on page 22 of the May issue of NRL News.)

Rocha was briefly interviewed by Court TV on May 21, during a visit to Washington to meet with sponsors of the bill. "We feel that Conner was a person - - there wasn't one murder, there were two murders," she said.

Laci Peterson, age 27, was eight months pregnant with her first child, Conner, when she was reported missing from her Modesto, California home on Christmas Eve. After a widely publicized search, the body of Conner was discovered on a San Francisco Bay beach on April 13. The next day, Laci's was found separately on the same beach.

Four days later, police arrested Laci's husband Scott Peterson. He was charged with two counts of homicide under the California murder law that was amended in 1970 to add the words "or a fetus," which the California Supreme Court later interpreted to apply after seven or eight weeks of development.

What the Federal Bill Does

Currently, unborn children are not recognized as victims when they are injured or killed during the commission of federal crimes.

"If Laci Peterson had been an Army officer, murdered on a military base, only a single homicide charge would apply under federal law," said NRLC's Johnson. "Under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the attacker would be subject to two separate charges - - with each charge appropriate to the degree of harm he did to each victim."

The bill would apply only to federal crimes, not to crimes of violence covered by state laws. This includes crimes committed in federal jurisdictions and certain acts, such as terrorist bombings, that are covered by federal law wherever they occur.

Generally, the penalty for the injury to or killing of the unborn child would be equal to that for the same harm done to a born person under the applicable federal law. However, the bill does not allow application of the federal death penalty for a charge brought on behalf of an unborn victim.

The bill applies to any "child in utero," defined as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." The bill explicitly excludes abortion and anything done by the pregnant woman herself.

"These crimes do not involve the performance of abortions - - this is a different threat to the right to life of unborn children, and different legal tools are necessary," explained NRLC's Johnson.

One-Victim Substitute

When the bill reaches the Senate floor, senators aligned with the abortion lobby are expected to offer a substitute proposal that would increase penalties for crimes in which a pregnant woman is victimized, but without allowing a second homicide charge or otherwise recognizing a second victim.

"Any senator who votes for a one-victim amendment is saying, in effect, that Sharon Rocha did not lose a grandson," Johnson said. "They should be prepared to defend the proposition that there is really no dead baby victim in the picture of Tracy Marciniak holding the body of her son Zachariah."

The reference was to a recently issued NRLC ad, "Don't Tell Me That My Dead Son Was Not a Real Crime Victim." This ad contains a powerful photograph of Wisconsin resident Tracy Marciniak holding the body of her son Zachariah, who was killed in her womb during the ninth month. (The photo also appeared on the cover of the May issue of NRL News.)

The story of Tracy and Zachariah was featured in the June 9 issue cover story in Newsweek titled, "Should a Fetus Have Rights?"

President Bush Supports Bill

On April 25, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters, "The President does believe that when an unborn child is injured or killed during the commission of a crime of violence, the law should recognize what most people immediately recognize, and that is that such a crime has two victims."

Fleischer said the President wanted to see congressional approval of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act "this year."

Resources

The NRLC website at www.nrlc.org contains the best collection of documentation on the subject of unborn victims of violence available anywhere on the internet. Specifically, see the Unborn Victims section at http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/index.html.

The documents available on the website include a description of current state unborn victim laws, state by state; a summary of numerous federal and state court rulings upholding laws recognizing unborn victims of violent crimes; and accounts of actual cases of crimes, including crimes in federal jurisdictions, in which mothers and their unborn children were killed or suffered grievous injury.

For more detailed information on the federal bill, see "Key Facts on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act" in the May edition of NRL News, page 23, which is also available on the website.