Walter Watts
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virus: Bill criminalizes violent harm to fetus
« on: 2004-03-25 19:56:24 » |
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I didn't know "harming a fetus during commission of a violent federal
crime" was a big problem?
'Dim republicans is a tricky bunch.
Walter
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Bill criminalizes violent harm to fetus
Decision expected to affect debate over abortion
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:37 p.m. ET March 25, 2004
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to make it a separate crime to
harm a fetus during commission of a violent federal crime, a victory for
those seeking to expand the legal rights of the unborn.
The 61-38 vote on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act sends the
legislation, after a five-year battle in Congress, to President Bush for
his signature. The White House said in a statement that it "strongly
supports protection for unborn children."
The House passed the bill last last month.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the bill was "powerful
because this act is about simple humanity, about simple reality."
But abortion rights lawmakers contended that giving a fetus, from the
point of conception, the same legal rights as its mother sets a
precedent that could be used in future legal challenges to abortion
rights.
Victory for abortion opponents It was the second big win for social
conservatives pushing protections for the unborn following enactment of
the so-called partial birth abortion ban last year. That ban is now tied
up in the courts.
The Senate cleared the way for passage with a 50-49 vote to defeat an
amendment, backed by opponents of the bill, that would have increased
penalties but maintained that an attack on a pregnant woman was a
single-victim crime.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., President Bush's opponent this fall,
interrupted his campaign schedule to vote yes on the one-victim
amendment. He voted no on final passage.
The bill states that an assailant who attacks a pregnant woman while
committing a violent federal crime can be prosecuted for separate
offenses against both the woman and her unborn child. The legislation
defines an "unborn child" as a child in utero, which it says "means a
member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is
carried in the womb."
"This bill recognizes that there are two victims," said Sen. Mike
DeWine, R-Ohio, a chief sponsor. Americans, he said, "intuitively know
that there is a victim besides the mother."
Obstacle falls The key obstacle was an amendment by Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., that would have imposed the same tougher penalties
outlined in the DeWine bill but classified any attack on a pregnant
woman as a single-victim crime, avoiding the issue of fetal rights and
the question of when a person attains personhood.
Feinstein said that by defining when life begins, the bill was "the
first step in removing a woman's right to choice, particularly in the
early months of a pregnancy before viability." She said it could also
chill embryonic stem cell research.
The Senate also defeated an amendment by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.,
that would have required employers to give unpaid leave, and states to
pay unemployment benefits, to women when they or family members are
victims of domestic or sexual violence.
Supporters of the bill have named it after Laci Peterson and her unborn
child, Conner, victims in a highly publicized murder case in California.
California, one of 29 states with an unborn victims law, is trying
Peterson's husband, Scott, on double murder charges.
Laci Peterson's stepfather, Ron Grantski, said at a Capitol Hill news
conference that he and Laci's mother had received several hundred
thousand sympathy cards and "they all mourned our loss of Laci and
Conner — not Laci and the fetus."
The Senate bill covers 68 federal crimes of violence, such as
drug-related shootings, violence at an international airport, terrorist
attacks, crimes on a military base and threats against a witness in a
federal proceeding.
Legal abortions excluded It would specifically exclude prosecution of
legally performed abortions — a fact supporters cite in arguing that the
bill would not undermine the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirming a
woman's right to end a pregnancy.
"The criminals who commit these crimes are not committing abortions,"
said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life
Committee. "They are depriving these unborn children of the right to
life. It's a separate issue related to the right to life."
Groups on both sides of the abortion issue lobbied hard on the
legislation.
The Christian Coalition of America said votes for either the Murray or
Feinstein amendments would be regarded as negative votes on its annual
congressional scorecard of lawmakers.
On the other side, NARAL Pro-Choice America delivered more than 130,000
petitions to senators urging defeat of the bill.
"This would be the first time in federal law that an embryo or fetus is
recognized as a separate and distinct person under the law, separate
from the woman," said NARAL President Kate Michelman. "Much of this is
preparing for the day the Supreme Court has a majority that will
overrule Roe v. Wade.
© 2004 The Associated Press
--
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love"
--Kupferberg--
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