Anchorage, AK (LifeNews.com) -- An air force staffer has been sentenced to 9 years, 6 months in prison in connection with charges that he killed his unborn child. Airman 1st Class Scott Boie of Milton, Wisconsin, who is stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, tried to cause his wife to have an abortion using an ulcer drug.

When Boie found out his wife Caylinn was pregnant, he asked her to get an abortion, she said Thursday during a court martial. After considering his request, Caylinn decided to keep her baby.

As authorities later determined, Boie used his computer to search for abortion drugs and found out about Misoprostol, a stomach ulcer drug that pro-abortion groups misuse to cause a miscarriage as part of the RU 486 abortion drug process or by itself.

Boie crushed misoprostol pills he allegedly obtained from his friend Ryan Bollinger into his wife's food in an attempt to cause an abortion.

A jury, made up of 10 members of the Air Force, acquitted Boie of killing the baby. Instead, they convicted him on lesser charges of attempting to kill an unborn child.

Had he been convicted on the more serious offense, Boie would have faced a maximum of 26 1/2 years in prison.

In addition to his jail sentence, Boie has been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force demoted to E-1, and, according to a KTUU report, hit with a "total forfeiture of all pay and allowances."

The case involves the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a national law which prosecutes defendants for killing or injuring an unborn child and applies to federal crimes or crimes committed in federal jurisdictions such as military bases.

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of National Right to Life, talked with LifeNews.com about the case.

"In this case, the military is prosecuting crimes against two victims -- a mother who survived, and an unborn child who died," he said. "The killing of the unborn child is being prosecuted under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which was enacted in 2004 after a five-year effort led by NRLC."

"We should remember that this law was enacted only over the vigorous objections of the pro-abortion lobby -- the same pro-abortion lobby that seeks to pack the Supreme Court with justices who would obliterate any shred of protection for unborn children," he added.

Some 37 states have similar laws on the books, but others fail to offer complete justice and protection for pregnant women and their unborn children.

On the stand on Thursday, Bollinger said he helped Boie and crushed up the pills, which caused a miscarriage a week later. Caylinn testified that she thought the miscarriage occurred naturally.

Learning from a friend later that Boie had attempted to kill her baby, she confronted him and tape-recorded a confession that was played during the court hearing.

In a second recorded conversation, Boie is allegedly heard trying to convince his wife that she really wanted the abortion, in an attempt to dodge culpability.

Boie's defense attorneys have tried to established that Caylinn's smoking may have contributed to the miscarriage and that she had a history of troubled pregnancies.

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