Republican Sen. Ellen Roberts is terribly disappointed that our Colorado Legislature didn’t pass a fetal-homicide bill. Boy, I’m not. That bill would have changed what we now call a fetus into what we now call a child, so that its death could be called a homicide. If that bill had passed, it wouldn’t matter if a woman had a miscarriage at two days or at two months, the miscarriage would have been a child, and someone could have been charged with murder.

Supposing a woman was hit and miscarried, or maybe someone yelled at her, and she grew tense and miscarried.Or maybe she was mad at her husband and said he caused her to miscarry. All of these cases could result in a murder charge because a miscarriage would be a dead child. The prosecutor could produce a “corpse,” could show the cause of death (the hitting or yelling) and could show motive (the anger directed at the woman). How could anyone defend against such a charge?

Unfortunately, women trying to have children often miscarry for a variety of reasons. It would have been cruel to turn such a private tragedy into a public event casting about for someone to charge with murder.

Roberts says she based her yes vote on testimony about pimps beating their prostitutes to end pregnancies. That’s lurid testimony all right, but why would she place more importance on such rare events than on the thousands of possible prosecutions that could result from all the tragic natural miscarriages that occur in Colorado each year? Maybe, as an attorney, she’s looking to get into criminal law when her Senate term ends.

Steve Doob

Durango