Fetus-tacular!

The senate passed a bill yesterday to make it a federal crime to harm a fetus. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Under the Senate-passed bill [H.R. 1997], violence against a pregnant woman would be regarded as two crimes: one against the woman, the other against her unborn child, defined as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." An assailant would not have to know a woman was pregnant to be prosecuted.

H.R. 1997's mostly Republican backers denied that this definition was intended to erode abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research by suggesting that life begins at conception.

Did they really? But this bill specifically defines the termination of a fetus as murder. This wasn't their only option. Sen. Dianne Feinstein had an alternative bill that "would have created a separate offense for terminating or interrupting a pregnancy in an attack on a woman. It would have imposed the same penalties as those prescribed by DeWine's bill, but without recognizing the fetus as a person and as a separate victim." This particular bit of common sense was rejected by one vote: only four republicans voted for it. Senate republicans vote overwhelmingly for H.R. 1997. Why the disconnect?

Because this bill is an attempt to chip away at abortion rights. National Right to Life called the Feinstien version a "killer amendment." (They also took a moment to assail John Kerry for voting for the Feinstein bill and against H.R. 1997. I can't wait for the ads: "John Kerry doesn't kiss babies. He kills them!") They are laying the groundwork for a new constitutional challenge to Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion activists know they will not get enough senators and congressmen to vote outright to end abortion rights. It's an old hot-button, and any politician still dicking around with that is seen as stodgy and old: everyone knows gay marriage is this season's threat to our civilization.

But with a Supreme Court that is very close to overturning Roe as it is, and the chance that Bush will get the chance to appoint a new justice, there's chance to mount a new court challenge. All that's needed is a legal basis for it.

This bill will create that legal basis. This also opens up the chance for a rightist federal attorney somewhere to try and charge some abortion clinic with murder one. It also creates legal challenges for stem cell research, something conservatives need as President Bush's compromise is exposed as bad science.

Anti-choicers have decided to gradually chip away at abortion rights, rather than get them all in one blow. It's a long term strategy. And it's working.

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