A Colorado woman accused of luring an expectant mother to a basement and cutting the baby from her belly might not face homicide charges in the child's death because of the way criminal law in the U.S. has become entangled in abortion politics.
In a highly charged debate that has played out across the country, Colorado has twice rejected proposals to make the violent death of a fetus a homicide, refusing to join 38 other states and the federal government for fear such a law would be used to restrict abortions.
That could complicate things for prosecutors in the case against Dynel Lane, 34, arrested in the grisly attack at her home Wednesday on a nearly eight-months-pregnant Michelle Wilkins. Wilkins survived; her baby girl died.
"Under Colorado law, essentially no murder charges can be brought if the child did not live outside of the mother," said Stan Garnett, district attorney of liberal Boulder County.
Keith Mason, the president of Personhood USA, an anti-abortion group that has been pushing for a fetal homicide law in Colorado, called the situation "literally absurd."
Fetal homicide laws have typically been promoted by abortion foes and opposed by abortion rights supporters, who fear such measures could be a backdoor way to attack the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, rejected that notion, saying: "Some of them have been in existence for 30 years, and they haven't had any impact on legal abortions."
In New Hampshire last week, the Republican-controlled legislature passed bills that would make the state the 39th to classify the violent killing of an unborn child a homicide.
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Should the violent killing of an unborn child be considered a homicide?
Why / Why not?