The Staten Island (NY) Advance reported Wednesday that Philip Moreno has been taken into custody after allegedly killing Alafia Rodriguez, his pregnant girlfriend, Ana DeSousa, and DeSousa’s seventh-month old unborn child.
Fortunately, the couple’s two-year-child was unharmed. Unfortunately, another woman was shot in the torso, according to Irene Spezzamonte. “She underwent surgery and remains in critical condition.”
The headline to the tragedy, which took place Monday afternoon in Mariners Harbor, illustrates a gaping hole in New York’s law: “A pregnant woman was killed in brazen home invasion. Is her unborn child a victim too?”
According to the state’s legal code, the answer is no!
Moreno is now facing several charges, including murder in the second degree, criminal use of a firearm, criminal possession of a firearm, criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, acting in a manner injurious to a child, and assault, according to a spokeswoman for the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.
Because of New York State laws, Moreno is not facing murder charges for the murder of the unborn child.
According to Ingrid Duran, NRLC Director of State Legislation, “38 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.” In addition, the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, enacted April 1, 2004, covers unborn victims of federal and military crimes.
But not New York. New York is better known as the anti-life trailblazer. On January 22, 2019, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the “Reproductive Health Act” which he correctly described as “the most aggressive” abortion law in the country.
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The RHA served as the model for similar ultra-pro-abortion legislation introduced in 2019 and, in many cases, passed. Choosing the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, of course, was no accident.
RHA has made abortion a ‘fundamental right’ and prohibited all limits on abortion throughout pregnancy; stripped abortion from the penal code; “decriminalized all forms of abortion in New York, even in domestic violence cases where an attack on a woman leads to the loss of her fetus,” according to Karen DeWitt of WRVO; and repealed protection for babies who survive abortion attempts.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
