The case of Laci and Conner Peterson continues to spark intense debate in advance of Congress considering legislation to allow criminals to be prosecuted for killing or injuring an unborn child following an assault on a mother during the commission of a federal crime.
Pro-life laws similar to the federal bill already are on the books in more than half the states, and pro-life groups are working to protect women in the others with newly proposed bills.
In Washington, President Bush has pledged to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which sponsors have nicknamed “Laci and Conner's Law” in honor of Laci Peterson and her unborn son. Laci's husband, Scott Peterson, has been charged with double murder by prosecutors in California, which has an unborn victims law.
The case has prompted a verbal battle between pro-life groups and abortion advocates who oppose such laws protecting pregnant women and their children.
“In the Peterson case, I've heard no one go on radio or TV and say there shouldn't be an indictment for the death of that child,” said pro-life Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH), the act's chief Senate sponsor. “The fact is there are two victims — it's a fiction to say there aren't.”
Pro-abortion groups oppose the bill because they are alarmed that Congress might, for the first time, recognize an unborn child as a person from the moment of conception — as the bill does.
“This is one of their strategies — to ascribe legal rights to the fetus separate from the woman,” said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Their intent is to do whatever they can to contribute to the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman's right to control her reproductive life.”
The latest version of the bill has been endorsed by Laci Peterson's parents and siblings. In a letter to sponsors this month, they said the measure “is very close to our hearts.”
Critics of the bill are upset that its sponsors so readily embraced the link to the high-profile murder case. Renaming the bill for Laci and Conner “is shameless exploitation of a horrific tragedy,” Michelman said. “It sickens me.”
To help promote the bill, the National Right to Life Committee has launched a new ad campaign revolving around a similar case.
In addition to citing the Laci and Conner Peterson murders, the National Right to Life Committee's ad campaign uses the photo of a mother at a funeral cradling the dead body of her son who had died in the womb when the mother was beaten.
According to the mother in the photo, Tracy Marciniak, law enforcement authorities in Milwaukee, Wis., told her, “Nobody died in the attack.” Marciniak's testimony is included in the print ad, which began running May 14.
“When I was hospitalized and grieving for my dead baby, law enforcement authorities told my family that they could charge the man who attacked only with assault,” Marciniak stated in the ad. “I was devastated.”
Marciniak's husband attacked her in Milwaukee in 1992, when her son, Zachariah, was four days away from his birth due date. The husband, Glendale Black, was convicted of beating his wife, but there was no law to punish him for the death of his unborn son.
In 1998, Wisconsin lawmakers approved legislation treating such instances as two crimes – not one. The bill is similar to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act proposed in Congress.
“Thank God California has such a law,” Marciniak said. “That's why prosecutors were able to file a double homicide charge in the brutal murders of Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner. They didn't have to tell surviving family members that legally, Conner had never lived and never died.”
An April 22-23 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics national poll showed that out of 900 registered voters, 84 percent favored California charging Scott Peterson with “two counts of homicide for murdering both his wife and unborn son.”
(This article originally released by the Associated Press, Cybercast News Service. Reprinted here courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
