Indiana Prosecutor Wants Unborn Victims Law to Apply Throughout Pregnancy
Email this article
Printer friendly page
RSS Newsfeed
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 30, 2008
Indianapolis, IN (LifeNews.com) — A local prosecutor in Indiana wants state lawmakers to expand the current unborn victims law that provides protection and justice for pregnant women and their unborn child. The measure helps in cases like that of Laci and Conner Peterson and the dozens of others who have been attacked in recent years.
The current state law, put in the books in the mid-1990s, is one of 36 across the nation that provides protection and justice.
However, the statute says the killing of an unborn child in a violent assault is murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter only when the baby has reached viability.
Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi wants to expand the law to protect mothers and unborn children throughout pregnancy.
His proposal to change the law was prompted by a case last week involving a pregnant woman who was in her fifth month of pregnancy. The robber shot Katherin Shuffield and the twin babies she was carrying died after the incident.
Because the babies were not considered viable under state law, the criminal can’t be held accountable for their deaths.
WIBC radio reports that Brizzi held a press conference with two legislators this afternoon to promote the change.
Should a bill be brought forward to expand the law, it would likely receive the support of Indiana Right to Life.
The pro-life group’s executive director, Mike Fichter, talked with LifeNews.com about the law.
"Prosecutor Brizzi is to be applauded for his immediate call to correct a serious flaw in Indiana’s feticide law that requires unborn children to be viable in order to trigger fetal homicide charges," he said.
"The viability requirement was originally put into the law through the pressure of abortion rights lobbyists who placed the protection of abortionists over common sense justice," he explained.
"Sadly, it appears that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to finally close a glaring loophole that treats unborn children such as the Shuffield twins as if their lives have no real value," Fichter said.
ACTION: Contact your state legislators and urge strong support for expanding the unborn victims law, Indiana Code 35-42-1-1. Go to https://www.in.gov/legislative and click on the Contact section for contact information.
Related web sites:
Indiana Right to Life – https://indianarighttolife.org
