An appeal before the Colorado Supreme Court last week asked the judges to consider if a man should be convicted of child abuse for injuring an unborn child.
The answer may seem simple to pro-life advocates, but it is not for the mixed-up legal system brought about by Roe v. Wade. In Colorado, unborn babies may be aborted for any reason up to birth. Even fetal homicide laws to punish criminals who kill unborn babies in situations unrelated to abortion have been repeatedly rejected by the Colorado legislature. New York and Illinois recently repealed their fetal homicide laws as well.
In abortion activists’ opinion, an unborn baby is not a real “person” until they are born. Even viable unborn babies and unborn babies who are desperately wanted by their mothers are nothing until they are born, according to abortion activists’ agenda.
The Colorado case involves Andre Jones, 38, of Fountain, Colorado, who was convicted of killing his pregnant wife, Lakeisha Jones, 32, in 2013, The Denver Post reports.
The couple were separated, and Lakeisha was pregnant with another man’s child when her husband allegedly broke into her home and shot her in the stomach, killing her and injuring her unborn baby, the report states. The baby survived but still suffers from injuries caused by the gunshot, according to the report.
Andre Jones’ conviction included child abuse, but the Colorado Supreme Court will decide if the charge will stick. On Tuesday, the court heard arguments in Jones’ case. It is not clear when the judges will issue their ruling.
“It’s going to be big in Colorado,” Aya Gruber, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder, told the newspaper. “It will answer the question of, ‘Does child abuse extend in utero?’ Is Colorado going to be one of those places where you can prosecute people for causing injuries to fetuses?”
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She pointed out the inconsistencies with the law, which does not allow a person to be punished for killing an unborn child but potentially could allow someone to be punished for injuring an unborn child.
“So say someone takes drugs,” Gruber said. “If the baby is born and is defective, maybe they’ll get child abuse. But if the mother takes enough drugs that the baby dies, then it isn’t anything. It’s a weird compromise when you think about it.”
Here’s more from the report:
… on Tuesday, assistant attorney general Erin Grundy argued that Jones can be convicted of child abuse. The child abuse law does not explicitly exclude unborn children in the way the homicide and unlawful termination laws do, she said.
“Had the legislature intended to limit this to those who are already alive, they’d have used the same language,” she said.
She also pointed to a previous court of appeals ruling in which the court ruled a suspect can be prosecuted for child abuse, but not for homicide, if the infant is injured in the womb but is subsequently born alive, even if the child later dies.
Colorado lawmakers considered similar questions a few years ago after the horrific attack of a pregnant woman whose seven-month-old unborn baby was cut out of her womb. In 2016, Dynel Catrece Lane was sentenced to 100 years in prison for attacking Michelle Wilkins but not for killing Wilkins’ baby girl.
As LifeNews previously reported, Colorado Republicans tried to pass an Unborn Victims of Violence law that would hold criminals accountable when they kill or injure unborn children in violent attacks against their mother. However, House Democrats killed the bill in a party-line vote.
Unborn victims of violence, or fetal homicide, laws are on the books in 37 states; they recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn baby as homicide in at least some circumstances. However, New York and Illinois repealed their laws as part of larger pro-abortion legislation in 2019.
Soon after the New York law passed, a pregnant woman was stabbed to death in New York City. Anthony Hobson, 48, of Rego Park, the man accused of murdering Jennifer Irigoyen, is not facing charges for the death of her five-month unborn child.
Initially, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Hobson would be charged with second-degree abortion in the death of Irigoyen’s unborn baby. However, a spokeswoman later told the New York Post that Hobson will not face the abortion charge because it “was repealed by the legislature.”
