Setting the stage to reverse Roe vs. Wade
Senate Votes to Make Harming a Fetus a Crime
By Jim Abrams
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate voted Thursday to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during commission of a violent federal crime, a victory for those seeking to expand the legal rights of the unborn.
The 61-38 vote on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act sends the legislation, after a five-year battle in Congress, to President Bush for his signature. The White House said in a statement that it "strongly supports protection for unborn children." The House passed the bill last month.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the bill was "powerful because this act is about simple humanity, about simple reality."
But abortion rights lawmakers contended that giving a fetus, from the point of conception, the same legal rights as its mother sets a precedent that could be used in future legal challenges to abortion rights.
It was the second big win for social conservatives, who last year pushed through protections for the unborn with enactment of the so-called partial birth abortion ban. That ban is now tied up in the courts.
The Senate cleared the way for passage with a 50-49 vote to defeat an amendment, backed by opponents of the bill, that would have increased penalties for harm to a pregnant woman but did not attempt to define when human life begins.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., President Bush's opponent this fall, interrupted his campaign schedule to vote yes on the amendment. He voted no on final passage.
The bill states that an assailant who attacks a pregnant woman while committing a violent federal crime can be prosecuted for separate offenses against both the woman and her unborn child. The legislation defines an "unborn child" as a child in utero, which it says "means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
