Related articles and links |  1 of 6

Fetal homicide bill "not about abortion," but it is about the promoting a culture of life and protecting the unborn
The U.S. Senate yesterday passed Laci and Conner's Law, also known as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, by a 61–38 vote. Two amendments to the bill, which makes it a separate crime to harm an unborn child during an attack on a pregnant woman, were narrowly defeated. One, from Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), would have simply raised the penalty for an attack on pregnant women, but would have kept such an attack as a single crime with a single victim.

"Clearly, there is a concerted effort to codify in law the legal recognition that life begins at conception," she said. "If we allow that to happen today, or in any other law, we put the right to choose squarely at risk. … Anyone who is pro-choice cannot vote for this bill without the expectation that they are creating the first legal bridge to do in Roe v. Wade."

Not so, said Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.). "Senator Feinstein has suggested that this bill somehow may result in assigning legal status to the term 'embryo,'" he said. "But I cannot find the term 'embryo' anywhere in the bill. Nor, for that matter, can I find the term 'embryo' in the Feinstein amendment. In short, this bill does not affect abortion, embryos or, for that matter, stem-cell research."

Mike DeWine (R-Oh.), a chief sponsor of the bill, made the same case. "It does not affect abortion rights whatsoever," he said. "This bill recognizes that there are two victims," something that Americans "intuitively know."

The point is this: protecting the unborn means more than just opposing abortion. This bill truly has no direct application for the abortion issue, explicitly stating that it can't be used against the mother in any circumstance, against anyone involved in a consensual abortion, or against anyone involved in medical treatment of the pregnant woman or the unborn child.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't have indirect application. As Focus on the Family bioethics analyst Carrie Gordon Earll says, the bill "helps to rectify the schizophrenia in our culture regarding the value of preborn life. Either young human life has value in our culture and is worth protecting or it's not."

It doesn't quite rectify that schizophrenia—in some ways, it may intensify it—but it has tremendous value in at least three ways. First, it defines, albeit in a limited federal law with infrequent opportunity for application, unborn children as human. Second, it points out to the American public—prolife or not—their own belief that unborn children have at least some right to life. Third, it demonstrates the hysteria of the extreme sexual left. In arguing that the death of an unborn child—a child that the mother has chosen to carry to term—is irrelevant, opponents of the bill are clearly putting themselves on the fringe of the debate.

Pledge of Allegiance:

• Many kids don't see Pledge as religious | As 'under God' controversy goes to the Supreme Court, kids and parents ponder how big a deal it is to them (The Christian Science Monitor)
  
  
• Jefferson, Madison, Newdow? | Michael Newdow's crusade to rid the Pledge of Allegiance of the words "under God" is a peculiarly American act of courage (Kenneth C. Davis, The New York Times)
  
  
• 'Culture wars' shaping election | The Supreme Court case over whether to keep a reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance is the latest skirmish in the "culture wars" that are helping shape the presidential election, much to the delight of Republicans (The Washington Times)
  
  

next page... |  1 of 6

March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48