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Unborn
Victims of Violence Act
Under current
federal law, if a criminal assaults a pregnant woman and kills her
unborn baby, he is charged only with assault, because the unborn baby
is not legally recognized as a victim. Under a bill currently before
the U.S. Senate – the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 503, S.
480) – any criminal who injures or kills an unborn baby while
committing a federal crime will be charged with two offenses, because
he has claimed two victims. Consider just one true life case:
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My
name is Tracie Marciniak. In the photo, I am holding the
body of my dead son, Zachariah, at his funeral. In the ninth
month of my pregnancy, I was brutally beaten by a man who
knew that I very much wanted my baby. This man punched me
very hard twice in the abdomen. Zachariah bled to death
within my womb because of a blunt-force trauma. My attacker
was convicted for the injury he did to me, but not for the
death of Zachariah, who was not legally recognized as a
crime victim.
We need
the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, because federal law
should recognize what this photograph shows: when a criminal
attacks a pregnant woman and injures or kills her unborn
baby, he has claimed two victims.
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