WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., invented the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

But he might as well have written it anonymously, for all the credit he received last week.

President Bush signed the bill into law Thursday, in the glittering East Room of the White House before hundreds of supporters and a bank of national television cameras.

For Graham, in Congress since 1995, it was his first major piece of legislation signed into law on its own two feet.

Graham began writing it more than a decade ago, when he was an Air Force prosecutor. It upset him, he said, that federal charges could be leveled for crimes against a pregnant mother, but not for the maiming or death of her fetus.

Graham, then in the House, introduced the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in 1999, months before U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, introduced it in the Senate.

DeWine got cheered when he entered the East Room on Thursday. So did U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa., who became the chief House sponsor of the bill after Graham won his Senate seat in 2002.

There was no cheering for Graham. The president did not mention him. Neither did stories on the bill that ran in newspapers across the nation.

Graham says that’s the way the dance of legislation goes: Whoever’s name tops the bill gets the recognition.

The most he would acknowledge is that it is “ironic” that for years he took flak from critics of the proposal, but ultimately did not get to run its victory lap.

Critics call the law a step to further restricting abortion.

Graham is gleeful knowing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.C., an abortion rights supporter, voted for it.

“That was sweet,” Graham said.