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THE ARTICLE:
George jumps ship on Laci Peterson Bill
Published: February 26, 2005
By DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register
Some call it the Laci Peterson Bill.
Oregon Right to Life supports it. So does Republican Rep. Donna Nelson of McMinnville.
The Oregon chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League opposes it, of course. The lines are drawn.
Republican Sen. Gary George of Newberg was one of the bill's original sponsors. And he ... well, he now opposes it.
In a week that saw both sides in Oregon and the nation's ongoing abortion debate take their case to the Capitol steps in Salem, Yamhill County's delegation in the Oregon Legislature split over a bill that wasn't supposed to be about abortion, but ended up being very much so.
House Bill 2020, introduced by House Speaker Karen Minnis, would give prosecutors the power to up the charges when an assault on a pregnant woman results in injury or death to the baby she is carrying.
The idea grew out of the slaying of Laci Peterson by her husband, Scott, in a celebrated 2002 case from California's San Francisco Bay Area. He was convicted in November of murdering both his wife and their unborn child, earning him a death sentence.
Laci Peterson's stepfather visited Oregon Monday to lobby for the bill. And Nelson is among more than two dozen lawmakers who have signed on as co-sponsors.
Until Monday, so was George. But no more.
He was apparently swayed by testimony from a relatively new voice in Oregon's pro-life movement - that of his aide, Amy Rabon of McMinnville.
Rabon has teamed with Mary Starrett, a former KATU-TV news anchor who once worked with Oregon Right to Life, to form a political action committee called Oregonians for Life.
Rabon, who worked for Nelson before switching to George, testified against the bill Monday. On Friday, Starrett was in Salem to lobby against HB 2020 as well.
Their objection is to treating the fetus one way in the context of legal abortion and another in the context of criminal violence.
"What this bill says is, if the baby is wanted, it's a crime," Starrett said. "If the baby is not wanted, it's not a crime. It's a feel-good piece of nothing."
George could not be reached for comment, but Rabon and Starrett confirmed he had decided to remove his name from the list of sponsors.
The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League is opposing the bill on the grounds that it "chips away" at abortion rights.
"It is specifically designed to undermine the freedom of a woman's right to choose," said Caroline Fitchette, who heads NARAL's Pro-Choice Oregon chapter. "The Legislature needs to acknowledge the problem of domestic violence against pregnant women without entangling it in the abortion debate."
Gayle Atteberry, who heads Oregon Right to Life, disagrees.
"This is not an abortion bill, even though it keeps getting pinned on us," she said. But she acknowledged, "We do support it."
Starrett said HB 2020 undermines the pro-life cause instead of advancing it.
If one assumes the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion will eventually be overturned - and Starrett does - then a law like HB 2020 would essentially ensure abortion rights by statute by limiting the circumstance under which harm to the fetus could be considered criminal, she said. "It would be the first time in the state of Oregon where abortion would be codified," she said.
Atteberry sees it differently.
"In Oregon right now, if you kill an unborn child, you are guilty of nothing," she said. "Zero."
That's true even in cases involving homicidal violence against women known to be pregnant.
The debate this week, marking the advent of Rabon's group on the political stage, served as a reminder that even within pro-life political circles, factions are occasionally at odds with each other.
Starrett said she used to support Oregon Right to Life, but grew frustrated with what she sees as the group's willingness to compromise political principle - to "sell out," as she put it. She goes so far as to call today's Right to Life "pro-abortion."
Atteberry described Oregonians for Life as nothing more than a pair of people "who do not have the same philosophy as Oregon Right to Life."
MY TAKE:
I think they have fucked shit up and blurred the lines. If a pregnant woman is murdered whether the baby was wanted or not that should stand as 2 counts of murder ESPECIALLY if the pregnancy was known about before the act of murder was committed. Killing the woman who is carrying the child is by cutting her up and dumping her body in the ocean, blowing her brains out with a 9mm pistol, or any other method of that kind is NOT abortion. And if that sounds brutal than stop and think about how brutal it is to let the motherfuckers walk on a technicality. [img]mad.gif[/img]
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This is going to be a Bill that is going to get nasty. Issues have been brought into it that shouldn't have been. And it clouded the whole purpose of the main purpose of the Bill itself. They might as well thrown it out and start from scratch. [img]mad.gif[/img]
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I totally agree with you. If someone kills a pregnant woman they should be charged with two counts of murder seeing as they are taking the lives of two people.
