History
Prior to enactment of the federal law, the "child in utero" was, as a general rule, not recognized as a victim of federal crimes of violence. Thus, in a federal crime that injured a pregnant woman and killed the "child in utero," no homicide was recognized, in most cases.
One exception was the "born-alive rule," applied in US v. Spencer, 839 F.2d 1341 (9th Cir. 1988), a case in which the child was born alive and died shortly afterwards; therefore there was no doubt that the decedent was once a living person under the law.
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was first introduced in Congress in 1999 by then-Congressman (later Senator) Lindsey Graham (R-SC). It passed the House of Representatives in 1999 and 2001, but not the Senate. In 2003, the bill was reintroduced in the House as H.R. 1997 by Rep. Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania. It was ultimately co-sponsored by 136 other members of the House before it passed by a vote of 254 in favor to 163 against on February 26, 2004. After several amendments were rejected, it was passed in the Senate by a vote of 61-38 on March 25, 2004. It was signed into law by President Bush on April 1, 2004.
Read more about this topic: Unborn Victims Of Violence Act
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)