Christy and Ashley’s Law:
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act
The bill would recognize that
when a criminal attacks a pregnant woman, and injures or kills her unborn
child, he has claimed two human victims.
Currently in West Virginia,
an unborn child is not recognized as a victim with respect to violent
crimes. Thus, if a criminal beats a
woman, and kills her unborn child, he can be charged only with assault and
battery against the woman.
Christina Alberts was nearly
nine months pregnant when she was murdered in Kanawha County. Christina’s daughter, whom she had already
named Ashley Nichole, would have been born in a matter of weeks. Her family was devastated to learn that West
Virginia’s murder statute did not allow the prosecution of an individual for
the murder of an unborn child. In fact,
the judge would not even allow the jury to know Christina was pregnant at the
time of the murder. Her brief life was
not recognized.
UVVA is Constitutional
It
is well established that this type of legislation does not conflict with
the Supreme Court’s pro-abortion decrees (Roe v. Wade, etc.). Criminal
defendants have brought many legal challenges to the state unborn victim
laws, based on Roe and other constitutional arguments, but the courts
have rejected all such challenges.
The
U.S. Supreme Court held that a state may enact laws that recognize unborn
children, so long as the state does not include restrictions on abortion that Roe
forbids The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the Minnesota law saying: "Roe
v. Wade . . . does not protect, much less confer on an assailant, a
third-party unilateral right to destroy the fetus." [State v. Merrill, 450
N.W.2d 318 (Minn. 1990)].
Abortion is Not the Issue
The
bill would apply to a "fetus," defined as "a member of the species
homo sapiens, at any stage of development, while carried in the womb of the
mother." The phrase “carried in
the womb" excludes any application of the bill to embryos in the
laboratory or prior to the point of a provably established pregnancy.
The bill explicitly excludes
abortions for which lawful consent has been given, or any action by a woman
that results in harm to her own unborn child.
Viability
Some
pro-abortion leaders believe that there are no unborn victims of violence or
that their lives should not be considered unless they are “viable”.
Carol
Lyons of Scott County, Kentucky, knows better. Her 18-year-old daughter,
Ashley, and her unborn grandson, Landon, died together at the hands of a
murderer on January 7.
"Nobody
can tell me that there were not two victims – I placed Landon in his mother's
arms, wrapped in a baby blanket that I had sewn for him, just before I kissed
my daughter goodbye for the last time and closed the casket," Mrs. Lyons
said.
When
Ashley learned she was pregnant, she was excited about being a mother. She began writing a private journal to her
unborn baby. Early on, she wrote that
she could not consider abortion.
On
January 7, Ashley's doctor gave her an ultrasound video of her baby, and she
learned he was a boy. Ashley named him Landon. Mrs. Lyons later related. "I saw the baby's heartbeat. I saw all of his little parts – all of his
little legs, fingers, toes. . . She pointed out every part of that baby to
me. And the whole time the baby's heart
was just beating."
In
the ultrasound, Landon was at about 21 weeks, so his lungs were two or three
weeks short of so called "viability," the point at which, if
delivered prematurely, he might have survived long term.
29 States Have Unborn Victim Laws
At
least 29 other states already recognize unborn children as victims of violent
crimes. Unborn victims bills are
currently under consideration in at least ten states including West Virginia.
Public Opinion
A May 2003 Newsweek poll found that 84% of Americans believe that an offender should be charged "for two murders instead of one." Only 9% were opposed to any charge for fetal murder.