THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602240001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
It's always interesting when politicians introduce a new word into the lexicon. Get ready to start talking about something called ``feticide.``
Feticide - murder of a fetus - will soon be a crime in Virginia if a bill proposed by Chesapeake Sen. Mark L. Earley passes the House of Delegates as easily as it did the Senate.
The proposed law would make the ``willfull, deliberate killing of a conceived, unborn but viable human offspring of another female, other than by lawful abortion . . . murder in the first degree.''
What does that mean in English? Basically, if an almost-about-to-be-born fetus - one old enough to survive outside the womb - is killed intentionally, the perpetrator can be charged with murder.
On the surface, this is a terrific idea. We all agree that murder is awful, and the slaying of a pregnant woman and her unborn child is unspeakable.
Senator Earley says he proposed the bill at the behest of the Chesapeake Commonwealth's Attorney, David L. Williams. In 1993 Williams prosecuted a man who strangled a pregnant woman. The victim's family was stunned to learn that the killer would be tried for only one murder, even though he killed her fetus, too.
But legislation passed in haste to remedy an unusual injustice often leads to bad law. Ironically, in the case Williams tried, the fetus was not viable so it wouldn't have been covered under Earley's law anyway.
There are some obvious flaws in this bill.
Under the proposed legislation, prosecutors could try a suspect for two murders if a pregnant woman and her ``viable'' fetus died. But the question is, when is a fetus viable - able to live outside the mother's body - and who determines that?
``Medical examiners can easily tell if a fetus was viable,'' Earley assured us this week.
But can they? Neonatologists disagree among themselves about the viability of premature babies. And medical examiners, while doctors, are not specialists in this highly specialized field.
Another question we ought to ask before hastily passing a controversial law is how big a problem is the crime? How often are pregnant women murdered? Remember, this statute would not even cover every single pregnant woman slain - only those in the final weeks of pregnancy.
Oddly enough, no one - including the sponsor of the bill - seems to know if there is one case of feticide a year or one a decade in Virginia. Until that is answered, we ought to ask ourselves if we really need a new law dealing with it.
This bill worries some pro-choice Virginians who fear it is just the first step in limiting a woman's right to an abortion. The camel's nose under the tent, as it were.
Earley, an ardent pro-lifer, insists that the bill has nothing to do with abortions. It places a value, he says, on the life of a fetus that is wanted by its mother. But Earley says he knows that pro-choice people are uncomfortable anytime ``personhood'' is conferred on an unborn baby.
It seems possible that by conferring legal status upon unborn children, the General Assembly will open a whole new area of prosecutions, not against society's thugs - but against careless, stupid or addicted expectant mothers.
If Earley's bill becomes law, might not some over-eager prosecutor decide to press charges against a crack-head mother whose drug addiction kills her fetus? Or a woman who refuses to wear a seat belt and loses her baby in a car accident? Or a woman foolishly using tobacco or alcohol during pregnancy, despite a blizzard of government warnings about their dangers?
There are other problems with this bill. I'm not a lawyer, but for two years in college I was an English major, and one word leaps out at me from this curious bill: offspring. Since an unborn fetus has not sprung from anywhere, I wonder how it could be considered offspring.
During Senate deliberations on the bill, a surprise witness, the state's chief medical examiner, testified that she was in favor of the bill and offered some very persuasive testimony.
Marcella F. Fierro, the inspiration for the savvy character of Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell's best-selling novels, described her outrage at performing an autopsy on a pregnant woman and her fetus.
``How would you feel if you were sitting there examining a baby that was perfect and had a bullet through its brain and know that this was not a crime?'' she asked the senators before they voted to pass the bill. ``It's a free homicide.''
Fierro also pointed out that the bill would send a powerful message to men who beat up their pregnant wives and girlfriends. They would know that if the baby died as the result of their brutality, they could face a murder rap.
This would be one very positive outcome of the bill. Men need to learn that they can't beat women. And beating a woman who is pregnant is doubly awful. If the fetus dies, there should be penalties for the perpetrator.
In reflecting on this soon-to-be-new-crime of feticide, I suspect one segment of society would spend lots of time and earn lots of money arguing about feticide: lawyers. But I wonder whether the bill would actually have a deterrent effect on anyone beastly enough to harm a pregnant woman? MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB