When Is Fetal Death 'Fetal Homicide'?
A lawyer whose client was charged with fetal homicide after allegedly kicking a pregnant woman says the law enabling an unborn child to be considered a murder victim is unconstitutional.
Pennsylvania is one of 27 states that have fetal homicide laws, widely promoted by anti-abortion groups to back up their argument that fetuses should be recognized as living human beings.
So far, Pennsylvania's 1999 Crimes Against the Unborn Child Act has been used in only a handful of cases, said attorney Tim Lucas.
The most recent involves his client, 20-year-old Corinne Wilcott, who is charged with murder of an unborn child, aggravated assault of an unborn child and related charges in the death of the 15-week-old fetus that Sheena Carson had been carrying.
Erie County prosecutors contend Wilcott attacked Carson and threatened her fetus during a fight June 8 because Wilcott's husband was the father. Carson testified at a preliminary hearing that Wilcott kicked her at least twice in the stomach.
Carson's fetus was declared dead four days after the fight.
Lucas argues that the law his client is charged under doesn't make sense.
On one hand, he said, it isn't a crime under the state's abortion law for a woman to terminate her pregnancy in the first 24 weeks. But under the statute governing crimes against unborn children, he said, a person could be charged with murder for killing a fetus of any age.
"There are conflicting statutes about what constitutes a human person," he said.
Prosecutor Jack Daneri has said Carson's child was threatened and died and that the charge is appropriate. The state Supreme Court ruled last year that the law could be used to prosecutor cases of murder, voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault.
The Wilcott case likely won't fuel a challenge to Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld abortion rights, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life Committee.
"It is what I would call a garden-variety unborn-victim case and I don't think it raises any new legal issues at all," Johnson said Saturday.
Colleen McCabe, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood's national office in New York, declined comment, saying she was unfamiliar with the case and would be unable to immediately reach an attorney with the organization.
Other states' fetal homicide laws have been upheld in the face of similar challenges. In January, a Utah judge upheld that state's 1983 law, rebuffing defense attorneys who argued that the fetus - about 14 weeks old when its mother was killed - was not a person because it could not have survived outside the womb.