According to the Supreme Court, killing a baby in his mother’s womb is not usually considered murder, but killing a baby out of the womb is. But what about killings that happen at the moment the baby’s being born or soon after? Are they murder or simply a form of extra late abortion?
This question was answered in December of 2009 when a Virginia woman gave birth to a child and killed it before police could arrive. Police were called to the scene of a woman experiencing labor. However, when they arrived, they discovered that the woman had give given birth 10 hours previously and the baby was dead. According to a policeman on the scene:
“I believe everyone was upset except the person that should have been upset, the mother.”
The woman had suffocated her child under bedding. She showed absolutely no remorse. Police wanted to charge her with murder, but a loophole in Virginia law says that as long as the baby is attached to its mother by the umbilical cord when she is killed, the mother cannot be charged with any crime – not even a lesser charge like manslaughter. According to Investigator Tracy Emerson :
“In the state of Virginia, as long as the umbilical cord is attached and [the] placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive, the mother can do whatever she wants to that baby to kill it. She can shoot the baby, stab the baby or anything as long as it is still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something, and it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”
Apparently, this was not the first time the police have found a woman who had just killed her baby and were unable to arrest her. Previously in a nearby county, police had gone to another woman’s home to find that she had also murdered her baby. When they were unable to prosecute her because of the law, they approached legislators and petitioned them to change the law to allow women to be prosecuted for murdering their children. However, the politicians they approached were pro-choice and were not willing to re-examine the law because it was related to abortion-rights. Therefore, it remains legal for women to kill their babies in the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord has not been cut.
A woman can stab, strangled, or shoot her living, crying, breathing baby 5 minutes or one hour after birth as long as the umbilical cord has not been cut. How many women have taken advantage of this situation of the law to murder their children is unknown. However, until the law is changed, these murders will continue to happen and the police will continue to be helpless bystanders.
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