An Indiana man, Jarod Rebuck, was charged with attempted feticide after mixing abortion-inducing herbs into the drink of his pregnant girlfriend. Indiana law defines feticide as knowingly or intentionally terminating a human pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus.
Rebuck’s girlfriend became suspicious after she noticed her drink tasted funny and found web searches on his phone about natural abortion “treatments.”
Later Rebuck allegedly told officers he wasn’t “in a position to have children financially or mentally.” Now Rebuck could face up to 20-years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Rebuck’s girlfriend did not miscarry and is still pregnant; but some women haven’t been so lucky. For example, as LifeNews previously reported, in Florida John Andrew Welden tricked his pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill by telling her it was an antibiotic. In actuality, the pill was the second drug in the deadly RU-486 abortion regimen.
In order to trick her, first Welden told his girlfriend that she had an infection and then switched the label on the abortion pill so that the medication would appear to be a common antibiotic. Her unborn baby died at 6-weeks old, and Welden was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, if the state of Florida had passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act before the time of Welden’s crime, he would have faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder.
As tragic as this story was, it did highlight the importance of legislation that would protect unborn babies and women who are victims of violence. Currently, in the United States 37 states have protective laws in place; and earlier this year Florida passed legislation that recognizes the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.
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The Florida Senate sponsor of the bill, Kelli Stargel, says overall the message is clear. She said, “My hope is with this that when a person is going to commit a crime against the woman, they need to take into consideration that if she’s pregnant, it’s going to cause a pretty stiff penalty and they’re going to think twice.”
Although Indiana law isn’t one of the 37 states that recognize unborn children as victims throughout the entire period of pre-natal development, they do have partial coverage; that is, they define the killing of “a fetus that has attained viability” as murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter.
