By ROB WEILER
President George W. Bush signed into law a new bill Thursday, April 1, 2004 that could have implications on discussions about the rights of pregnant women and unborn children.
With the parents of Laci Peterson and other Americans who have lost daughters and grandchildren in violent crimes, Bush signed The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, expanding the legal rights of unborn children.
“As of today, the law of our nation will acknowledge the plain fact that crimes of violence against a pregnant woman often have two victims,” Bush said in a signing ceremony at the White House.
The bill allows prosecutors in certain federal crimes to file separate charges when the attacker injures or kills both a woman and an unborn child.
“The death of an innocent unborn child has too often been treated as a detail in one crime, but not a crime in itself,” Bush said.
Cynthia Hallen, a linguistics professor at BYU and member of the faculty organization University Faculty for Life, said the bill is an important first step in validating the rights of women, children and family.
“This is the first federal legislation that in specific limited context establishes the legal personhood of unborn children,” she said.
Hallen said legally, a person is a human being entitled to the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unborn children, however, are not yet considered people in a legal setting, similar to the legal standing of slaves in early American history.
“I think this is one of the last great civil rights battles before the millennium,” she said.
BYU law professor Lynn Wardle said the bill brings the federal law into conformity with 29 state laws concerning unborn children.
“It’s nothing new and hardly remarkable,” he said.
Wardle said the new law applies to crimes on federal land, like a camping site, and not state-owned property, like a city street.
Utah is one of the 29 states that already has a similar law to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. SB 178 states, “A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, … causes the death of another human being, including an unborn child at any stage of its development.”
While he called the new bill a modest one, Wardle said the remarkable part about it is the consequences it will have on the controversy of unborn children.
“This is consistent with President Bush’s position on protecting human life,” he said.
The bill passed 245-163 in the House in February and 63-38 in the Senate on March 25.
Opponents of the bill, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., still question the legal status of a fetus as a human being and the ability to enforce Roe v. Wade if fetuses are legally considered as such.
The bill is also known as “Laci and Conner’s Law.” Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she disappeared in December 2002. Laci’s husband Scott is on trial in California on double murder charges for their deaths.
