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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Colossus_500 on May 01, 2007, 10:19:18 AM
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COMMENTARY: Laci’s Legacy
by Bruce Hausknecht
Her murder, and that of her preborn son, Conner, inspired state and federal laws that frighten liberals, but shouldn’t.
In a tragic case more than 30 years ago, an enraged ex-husband viciously attacked Teresa Keeler, eight months pregnant with a daughter fathered by another man. A kick to the mother’s stomach broke the baby’s skull, and she was delivered stillborn. California charged Robert Keeler with murder, but the state Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the existing homicide law did not apply. Public outrage led to a revision of the law in 1970.
Three decades later, the highly publicized murders of Laci Peterson and her preborn son, Conner, and the double-murder conviction of Scott Peterson, led many other states and the federal government to belatedly enact laws similar to California’s. The federal “Unborn Victims of Violence” statute, signed by President Bush in 2004, covers murders on military bases and other federal property, and includes federal personnel and situations not covered by state law.
These Laci-and-Conner laws are extremely popular with the public; various polls show public support consistently at around 80 per cent. But liberal legislators claim the laws undercut Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion on demand. The Roe opinion said a fetus is not a person, and therefore unprotected by the 14th Amendment, which says that states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
Most state fetal homicide laws avoid conflict with Roe by describing the preborn child as a “fetus,” “embryo,” or simply “unborn child”—anything but a “person.” This creates a contradiction between the protection of the preborn through fetal homicide laws and the killing of preborn children through abortion—an inconsistency that has been exposed in a couple of recent cases.
In January, the Texas Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction of Gerardo Flores for the 2004 killing of his two preborn children. Flores’ pregnant girlfriend wanted to terminate her pregnancy, and asked Flores to step on her abdomen. He obliged, the babies were stillborn, and a jury convicted him of double murder.
A similar case in Michigan in 2005 involved a 16-year old pregnant girl who asked her 17-year-old boyfriend to terminate her pregnancy by hitting her with a baseball bat. The 6-month-old preborn child was stillborn, and police arrested the boyfriend. The court convicted the boyfriend and sentenced him to community service at a pro-life pregnancy center.
Even though the boyfriends in each case were found guilty of murder, no one would have been prosecuted had the women sought a legal abortion—a contradiction that the U.S. Supreme Court seems willing to live with. In the 1989 Supreme Court decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court decided that Missouri is entitled to declare and follow its stated policy that “life begins at conception” as long as that state ignores its own policy by permitting most abortions.
The practical impact of Webster is that liberals need not fear that fetal homicide laws under consideration in a half-dozen states will inevitably lead to the overthrow of Roe. Thus their opposition to such laws, as occurred recently in the Democrat-controlled Colorado Legislature, is unnecessary.
Bruce Hausknecht, J.D., is judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action.
State by state
Twenty-six states plus the federal government extend fetal-homicide protection to preborn babies at any stage of pre-natal development:
AL, AK, AZ, GA, ID, IL, KY, LA, ME, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TX, UT, VA, WV and WI.
Eleven other states extend protection only after the preborn child reaches a certain stage of gestation:
AR (12 weeks)
CA (7-8 weeks)
FL (viability)
IN (viability)
IA (second trimester)
MD (viability)
MA (viability)
NV ("unborn quick child" – probably first fetal movement)
RI (viability)
TN (viability)
WA ("unborn quick child")
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COMMENTARY: Laci’s Legacy
by Bruce Hausknecht
Her murder, and that of her preborn son, Conner, inspired state and federal laws that frighten liberals, but shouldn’t.
In a tragic case more than 30 years ago, an enraged ex-husband viciously attacked Teresa Keeler, eight months pregnant with a daughter fathered by another man. A kick to the mother’s stomach broke the baby’s skull, and she was delivered stillborn. California charged Robert Keeler with murder, but the state Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the existing homicide law did not apply. Public outrage led to a revision of the law in 1970.
Three decades later, the highly publicized murders of Laci Peterson and her preborn son, Conner, and the double-murder conviction of Scott Peterson, led many other states and the federal government to belatedly enact laws similar to California’s. The federal “Unborn Victims of Violence” statute, signed by President Bush in 2004, covers murders on military bases and other federal property, and includes federal personnel and situations not covered by state law.
These Laci-and-Conner laws are extremely popular with the public; various polls show public support consistently at around 80 per cent. But liberal legislators claim the laws undercut Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion on demand. The Roe opinion said a fetus is not a person, and therefore unprotected by the 14th Amendment, which says that states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
Most state fetal homicide laws avoid conflict with Roe by describing the preborn child as a “fetus,” “embryo,” or simply “unborn child”—anything but a “person.” This creates a contradiction between the protection of the preborn through fetal homicide laws and the killing of preborn children through abortion—an inconsistency that has been exposed in a couple of recent cases.
In January, the Texas Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction of Gerardo Flores for the 2004 killing of his two preborn children. Flores’ pregnant girlfriend wanted to terminate her pregnancy, and asked Flores to step on her abdomen. He obliged, the babies were stillborn, and a jury convicted him of double murder.
A similar case in Michigan in 2005 involved a 16-year old pregnant girl who asked her 17-year-old boyfriend to terminate her pregnancy by hitting her with a baseball bat. The 6-month-old preborn child was stillborn, and police arrested the boyfriend. The court convicted the boyfriend and sentenced him to community service at a pro-life pregnancy center.
Even though the boyfriends in each case were found guilty of murder, no one would have been prosecuted had the women sought a legal abortion—a contradiction that the U.S. Supreme Court seems willing to live with. In the 1989 Supreme Court decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court decided that Missouri is entitled to declare and follow its stated policy that “life begins at conception” as long as that state ignores its own policy by permitting most abortions.
The practical impact of Webster is that liberals need not fear that fetal homicide laws under consideration in a half-dozen states will inevitably lead to the overthrow of Roe. Thus their opposition to such laws, as occurred recently in the Democrat-controlled Colorado Legislature, is unnecessary.
Bruce Hausknecht, J.D., is judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action.
State by state
Twenty-six states plus the federal government extend fetal-homicide protection to preborn babies at any stage of pre-natal development:
AL, AK, AZ, GA, ID, IL, KY, LA, ME, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TX, UT, VA, WV and WI.
Eleven other states extend protection only after the preborn child reaches a certain stage of gestation:
AR (12 weeks)
CA (7-8 weeks)
FL (viability)
IN (viability)
IA (second trimester)
MD (viability)
MA (viability)
NV ("unborn quick child" – probably first fetal movement)
RI (viability)
TN (viability)
WA ("unborn quick child")
Good commentary. It's a shame legislators have to tap dance around this issue.
And there is a special warm place reserved for the Scott Petersons of the world.
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Good commentary. It's a shame legislators have to tap dance around this issue.
And there is a special warm place reserved for the Scott Petersons of the world.
Yep. The only reason the legislators don't speak up is because they receive so much funding from the lobbyist groups like Planned Parenthood and NOW. Where it not for the flow of money coming in, my guess is that more legislators would vote in favor of laws like this.
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Yep. The only reason the legislators don't speak up is because they receive so much funding from the lobbyist groups like Planned Parenthood and NOW. Where it not for the flow of money coming in, my guess is that more legislators would vote in favor of laws like this.
I agree.
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Fuck Laci and Conner Peterson. :)