The President Understood What John Kerry Did Not - Our Family Lost Two Victims

By Carol Lyons

On January 7, I was seeing my grandson, Landon, for the very first time. Landon was moving around in an ultrasound image on the TV screen in our home in Stamping Ground, Kentucky.

Our 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, was 21 weeks pregnant, and she had just gotten the ultrasound video from her doctor. Ashley was incredibly excited about her baby as she pointed out, to her brother and me, every part of that baby on the screen - - the little toes and fingers, his spine, everything.

We could clearly see Landon's little heart beating. We could see his little face. Just a few hours later, Ashley and Landon were both dead. They were found murdered - - shot to death - - in Ashley's own car in a local park.

Since then, life has been a nightmarish blur - - never-ending anguish, mixed with anger and bafflement. More than two months after the crime, a man was arrested. We can only pray that justice will be done.

But it cannot be full justice, because soon after the crime, I was informed that in the eyes of the law, we had lost a daughter, but not a grandson. Under Kentucky law, I learned, this crime had a single victim.

I could not accept this. Nobody can tell me that there were not two victims. I placed Landon in Ashley's arms, wrapped in a baby blanket that I had sewn for him, just before I kissed my daughter goodbye for the last time and closed the casket.

I found a journal that Ashley had been writing to her baby. Right at the beginning, when she was only two months pregnant, she wrote how she had rejected advice to get an abortion.

"I couldn't do that," she wrote. "I already loved you."

Ashley also wrote, "You are the child I have always dreamed about. I know that it will be a long time before I meet you but I can't wait to hold you for the first time. I love you more everyday. Always, Mommy."

Yes, the killer took two lives - - each with a long, bright future ahead. It is heartless and cruel to say that the law must pretend this is not so. Ashley had made her choice. She chose life.

I learned that for many years some legislators in Kentucky had attempted to pass a "fetal homicide" bill, but it had always been blocked by objections from groups that said it would conflict with the Supreme Court rulings that legalized abortion.

That made no sense to me. Twenty-eight other states already had fetal homicide laws - - that's why the State of California has charged Scott Peterson with two murders in the killings of Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner. Those laws had not affected abortion. My husband, Buford, and I appealed to the Kentucky legislature. Within weeks, the legislature responded by passing a fetal homicide bill, which Governor Ernie Fletcher signed into law in February.

We also went to Washington twice to help urge members of Congress to support the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. This bill would allow a criminal to be charged for any harm he does to an unborn child during commission of a federal or military crime. We met and worked with members of other families who had also lost loved ones, both born and unborn, in violent crimes.

The House of Representatives passed the bill on February 26, 254-163. The Senate agreed on March 25, 61-38 - - but only after surviving a nerve-wracking 49-50 vote on an amendment that would have gutted the bill by defining these crimes as having only a single victim. I was appalled that Senator John Kerry voted the wrong way. He doesn't believe there are two victims, but I know my grandbaby was real.

On April 1, we were in Washington one more time, to stand with President Bush as he signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law. Members of other families were there, too, including the family of California murder victims Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner.

Of course, laws are not retroactive, so these new laws will not allow full justice to be done on behalf of Landon or others slain in the past.

But they will ensure that in the future, mothers, fathers, and grandparents will not be told that the law is blind to the loss of a child who was unborn, but already living and loved.

[To read about other cases of unborn victims of violence, visit the NRLC web site at http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_victims/Two_Victims/index.html]