COLUMBIA, S.C. The U.S. Senate’s passage two weeks ago of a controversial bill on prosecuting the killers of unborn children has serious implications for legal precedent; even if the Supreme Court will not view it as grounds for overturning Roe v. Wade.In passing the bill on March 25, the Senate sent a strong message to the federal judiciary that the definition of the beginning of human life is a matter still very much up for consideration in the lawmaking branch of government. Officially known as the Unborn Victims of Violence act, the bill was originally filed in 1999, but gained the attention of legislators after the murder of Laci Peterson in December 2002. Peterson was pregnant at the time, and the intent of the bill is to provide an apparatus with which to charge the killers of such women with an additional homicide out of respect for the child they carry.
Liberals see this as a back way of undermining a woman’s right to reproductive choice, as the bill essentially defines human life as beginning at conception. President Bush has enthusiastically promised to sign the bill into law, to the delight of his core conservative voter base, in what can be seen as an election year appeal to the home team.
No matter the intent of the bill, which, depending on the perspective of whom you ask, could be to protect children or destroy the right to abortion in America, it promises to create dissonance in our legal system. With the right to abortions upheld by the courts, this new bill will create an opportunity to challenge the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that created the former.
Although the Supreme Court is too divided to overturn Roe v. Wade, it may be many years before the ripples created by this bill settle and American jurisprudence is again moving in the same direction.