Pro-Life Group Asks Military to Charge Hasan for Killing Unborn Baby at Fort Hood

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 13, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Pro-Life Group Asks Military to Charge Hasan for Killing Unborn Baby at Fort Hood

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 13
, 2009

Fort Hood, TX (LifeNews.com) — A pro-life legal group has asked the U.S. military to charge Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan with the unlawful killing of an unborn child in the shooting that recently took place at the Fort Hood military base. The initial 13 murder charges do not include one for the death of an unborn child, the fourteenth victim.

Hasan is suspected of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian in last Thursday’s shooting and he was shot and wounded by two police officers at the base.

Yesterday, military officials charged him in those deaths and U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman Chris Grey said additional charges may be filed — which the Alliance Defense Fund hopes is the case.

ADF issued a letter Thursday to the Office of Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Hood, Texas, urging it to enforce the law by bringing the fourteenth charge. It wants Hasan to be held responsible for killing both Francheska Velez and her unborn child.

"All murder victims–born and pre-born–deserve equal justice," ADF senior legal counsel Steven Aden told LifeNews.com on Thursday. "Women who volunteer to protect our country deserve to know that the government will enforce the laws that protect their children."

The ADF letter urges enforcement of Article 119a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which makes it a crime for anyone "to cause the death…of a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place" regardless of whether the killer intended to kill the child.

If the killer intended to kill the child, he can be prosecuted for murder under Article 118.

"According to press accounts, Private Velez had returned to America from Iraq a week before the shooting," the letter states.

"Private Velez was three months pregnant and was excited about being a new mother. She was scheduled to begin maternity leave next month. She was filling out paperwork relating to her pregnancy when she and her child were killed," the ADF letter reads.

"It would cause a severe and negative impact on morale if Army women were made to believe that the Army valued their children less than they did adult victims of crime. We respectfully request that you enforce UCMJ Article 119a against the suspect," the letter says.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice was modified when President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in 2004.

As LifeNews.com opinion columnist Maria Vitale wrote Wednesday, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also known as Laci and Conner’s law, is named for the pregnant woman and unborn baby who were murdered in California by Scott Peterson, the baby’s father.

"It would seem that the law applies in this case for three reasons: the act of violence was committed on federal property…the shooting was allegedly done by a member of the military…and the violence could be classified as an act of terrorism," she explains.

Also, under Texas law that took effect in September 2003, the protections of the entire criminal code extend to “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”

"The Obama Administration has a moral obligation to press for prosecution of Hasan under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If such a legal path is ignored, it will demonstrate to the world that the President is caving in to a pro-abortion lobby who will not recognize the legal rights of any child in the womb—even a child whose mother desperately longs to give birth," Vitale concludes.

Related web sites:
Alliance Defense Fund – https://www.alliancedefensefund.org

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