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Attorney General Kelly Ayotte is recommending a review of fetal homicide laws across the country in the wake of a New Hampshire Supreme Court decision that found a 7-month-old fetus killed in a reckless car crash could not be a homicide victim, because the fetus was not "born alive."
The court found that, under principles in New Hampshire law that date back to the 14th century, the charge [of negligent homicide and manslaughter] did not apply.
"At the very least, an expelled or extracted fetus must show some spontaneous sign of life before it is considered another and its death can result in criminal prosecution," Chief Justice John Broderick wrote in the court's opinion. Two other justices concurred with his opinion.
While this was a horrible event (the details are in the Monitor article), and Lamy (the drunk driver responsible) should be punished, the slippery slope for a woman's right over her body will get steeper and messier if the state creates a statute of murder pertaining to a fetus. It could actually pit the individuality of the fetus, once granted, against that of the mother. Pregnant women could be subject to all kinds of personal restrictions, for fear of being "negligent" if anything happened to the fetus.
I hope Attorney General Ayotte and her staff can recommend legislation that would increase penalties for such crimes where a fetal death is involved, but stop short of the word "homicide". Given the fact that she is a Republican, and took our state's unconstitutional parental notification law to the US Supreme Court, I am concerned.
The Monitor article states that one of the reasons the English common law was set up that way, was to differentiate between stillborn children and those killed by their mothers right after birth, all too common before women had access to birth control and other reproductive choices.
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