When a criminal attacks a pregnant woman, injuring or killing both her and her unborn child, has the criminal claimed one victim or two? It is a timely question, as members of the S.C House prepare to take up the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2006 after it passed the Senate on March 1 with strong bipartisan support.

This legislation will deter violence against women and unborn children; it tracks the federal law that recognizes an unborn child as a separate victim of crime if the child is harmed during a violent attack on the mother on federal property such as Fort Jackson. Polls show more than 80 percent of the American public agreed that the child should be counted as a second victim of crime.

In 2003, South Carolina resident Kristi Petrilla was violently assaulted and lost her baby at three months of pregnancy. The criminal spent only 15 days in jail. Had the assault occurred at Fort Jackson, the assailant could have been prosecuted for murder.

Kristi and her parents testified before the state Senate about the devastation they felt losing the baby and their helplessness to hold the assailant responsible for the baby’s death. They urged state lawmakers to enact the Unborn Victims of Violence law.

Opponents of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act include the New Morning Foundation and Planned Parenthood. The New Morning Foundation is an organization whose stated purpose is to reduce the number of teen pregnancies in South Carolina. Why would a teen-pregnancy-reduction foundation oppose a law granting justice to a mother and her unborn child who are victims of criminal violence?

Planned Parenthood’s vice president for health systems, Christopher Hollis, frets that the Unborn Victims law could somehow “produce an adversarial legal relationship between the mother and embryo.” Is Mr. Hollis afraid the embryo will hire a lawyer and sue the mother? Or is he afraid that recognizing an unborn child as something more than disposable property will cost Planned Parenthood some business?

It is ludicrous and extreme for abortion supporters to envelop a criminal attack on a pregnant woman with abortion law. A wanted baby and her mother cannot be protected from criminal attack? The Unborn Victims of Violence Act has absolutely nothing to do with abortion.

Roe v. Wade never was intended to confer on a third-party criminal thug the right to kill or harm an unborn child. In 1990, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the double-murder conviction of a man whose victim might not have known she was pregnant. The Minnesota Supreme Court also ruled it was irrelevant whether the criminal knew the victim was pregnant. “The possibility that a female homicide victim of childbearing age may be pregnant is a possibility that an assaulter may not safely exclude,” the court noted.

This is an excellent deterrent principle. The deterrence is heightened by the fact that someone who attacks a woman can be convicted of fetal homicide, even if the force he uses is less than lethal to the mother herself. This was the case with Kristi Petrilla. Although injured, she survived the assault, but her baby did not. Was there one victim or two? Kristi Petrilla and her family soon will have their answer from the S.C. House.

Ms. Gatling is the executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life and secretary of the National Right to Life Committee.