When Laci Peterson's mutilated body washed up on a California shore on April 13, Americans were shocked and appalled. Cries for justice were greeted with the swift arrest of her husband Scott, who was charged with her murder — and with the "murder" of the 8-month-old foetus Laci was carrying, and which she called Conner.
California is one of 25 US states with foetal homicide laws. Although the laws have exemptions for abortion undertaken voluntarily by the pregnant woman, feminist groups have campaigned for the abolition of these laws for two decades.
"If this is murder, anytime a late-term foetus is aborted, they could call it murder", National Organisation for Women New Jersey spokesperson Marva Stark told the April 20 National Review.
But the Laci Peterson case has cut opposition to these laws significantly. Even many pro-choice advocates have begun to support them. An April 22-23 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics national poll showed that 84% of registered voters supported Scott being charged with double homicide.
Within days of the poll, US President George Bush announced he was making another attempt to pass the languishing Unborn Victims of Violence Act (a federal version of the California law) — but this time renaming it "Laci and Conner's Law".
There is considerable pressure for the double homicide charge. If Scott Peterson is convicted of two murders, it will qualify him for the death penalty, which one murder charge will not.
For many people, Laci Peterson's foetus has become a person, as it evidently already was to her. She was thrilled to be pregnant with her first child, had built a room for the baby, named him and sang to him.
This image of the foetus as an already existing person was abhorrently reinforced by the published images of Laci Peterson's mutilated body, from which her murderer had cut the foetus, thus ensuring not one, but two bodies were found by the police.
Laci Peterson's murder was unbelievable sick and brutal. It was also, unfortunately, not unique. A 2001 study carried out by the director of Maryland's health department found that homicide was the most common pregnancy-related cause of death in the US — overwhelmingly, the murderer was in a close relationship to the woman.
In supporting the double homicide charge, Laci's parents argued that Conner was a "person" they had looked forward to meeting.
"Only Laci earned the right, by virtue of her sole biological ability to carry Conner to term, to decide whether or not to continue that journey to his birth. If Scott Peterson took Conner's life as well as Laci's, he should be charged with double homicide", TV feminist commentator Lisa Bloom declared on April 24.
But Laci Peterson's murder does not justify treating any foetus — a potential human being — as a person with independent legal rights. The crime that was committed was against Laci. Even had she survived the assault, but lost the foetus, the crime would still have been committed against her — against her right to control her own body, including her right to complete her pregnancy.
The anti-choice advocates are desperate to pass the federal bill because they know there is a logical inconsistency in granting a foetus legal rights independent of its mother and giving women the right to abort a dependent foetus. This contradiction is already being raised by the misogynist right-wing.
Violence against pregnant women should not need legal recognition of the foetus as an independent person in order to be taken seriously.
On May 7, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously upheld an assault conviction against Edwin Sandoval, who had slipped his girlfriend labour-inducing drugs in an attempt to make her miscarry against her will.
Sandoval's lawyers argued that he could not be charged with assault against the woman because the target was the foetus. The ruling established that the foetus was part of the woman's body, and Sandoval was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for assaulting her.
Connecticut's governor is about to sign a law making forced miscarriage a specific sub-category of assault, punishable by 10-25 years' imprisonment.
This is a far preferable approach, because it recognises that an attack on a pregnant woman's body is an attack on a person, not on the potential human being she is carrying. Furthermore, if, as a result of the attack, the embryo or foetus dies, then that is a violation of the pregnant woman's right to decide to carry her pregnancy to term.
If we are to commemorate Laci Peterson, let her legacy be a reaffirmation of a woman's right to decide when and if to have children — not an attack on it.
BY ALISON DELLIT
From Green Left Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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