April 02, 2004

Bush Signs Fetus Rights Legislation
[Note the way Liberal Yahoo calls the baby a "fetus" also, even in the present context!]

President Bush invoked the case of pregnant murder victim Laci Peterson on Thursday as he signed legislation expanding legal rights of the unborn. "The suffering of two victims can never equal only one offense," Bush said.

Bush was joined on an East Room stage by Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha, and her stepfather, Ron Grantski. Peterson was eight months pregnant when she disappeared in December 2002 in the highly publicized case. Supporters of the bill have cited her and the son who was to have been named Connor.

"This little soul never saw light, but he is loved and he is remembered," the president said. "All who knew Laci Peterson have mourned two deaths and the law cannot look away and pretend there was just one."

Bush gave the bill, an important one to many in his conservative base[Gosh! ...as if it weren't important to all Americans or God or the rights of "fetal" men and women everywhere. Nope. Just "conservatives."--Jen], the first elaborate signing ceremony of the year. The law makes it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.

"As of today, the law of our nation will acknowledge the plain fact that crimes of violence against a pregnant woman often have two victims," Bush said. "Therefore, in those cases, there are two offenses to be punished."

The bill passed by a 245-163 vote in the House and by a 61-38 margin in the Senate.

People on both sides of the fetal rights and abortion issue have said the new law will have far-reaching consequences.

Abortion opponents welcome it as a step toward more sweeping protections for the unborn, while abortion-rights proponents say the measure represents the first recognition in federal law of an embryo or fetus as a separate person.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Bush's presumptive opponent in this fall's election, voted against the bill.

Remember this vote come November.
And not just Kerry's "No" either.
Check out who else voted against it at the
Senate site, all because they thought it threatened their oh-so-precious universal abortion.
My heart goes out to Laci Peterson's parents and Conner's grandparents, whose hearts are broken, and I thought it was so dear that President Bush invited them to the White House for the signing of this bill.
It's hard to believe that our unborn babies had to have a new law to acknowledge that they're persons at the moment they're killed; since modern technology has allowed us to see our babies on sonograms from a very early time of pregnancy and we've discovered that "fetuses" can do things like smile in the womb, how can anyone doubt that they're not already persons who are alive?
(I kept thinking about the lovely actress Sharon Tate today, who with her last breath, begged the Manson family to spare her life for the sake of her 8-month-old "fetus" when they murdered her in 1969.)
America did a good thing today and while most of the media focused on death in Iraq, it makes me feel good that in our nation's capital, they were affirming Life!