By Guy Page
A bill treating a fetus killed in a DUI as a victim will be introduced shortly into the Vermont Legislature.
Rep. Terri Williams (R-Granby) said the bill is her response to a 2009 Bennington County car accident in which a drunk driver slammed into the car driven by Patricia Blair, who was six months pregnant with twins. Both fetuses died.
That accident deprived Blair of her right to choose, Williams said. “It was taken away from her by someone who murdered those babies,” said Williams. “What I’m asking is if someone steals someone’s right to choose, shouldn’t there be some consequences for that?”
Current state law states that “If serious bodily injury to or death of any person other than the operator results, the operator shall be imprisoned for not more than 15 years or fined not more than $15,000, or both. If serious bodily injury or death results to more than one person other than the operator, the operator may be convicted of a separate violation for each decedent or person injured.”
The proposed bill – which as of this morning has no number and is not yet listed under “bills to be introduced” – would establish that a fetus be treated as a victim under state homicide law and for purposes of DUI with death resulting and grossly negligent operation of a motor vehicle with death resulting, according to an early draft of the bill.
The bill says the proposed legal change has nothing to do with abortion, which is protected by an amendment to the state constitution.
“This section shall not apply to acts performed during an abortion or pursuant to usual and customary standards of medical practice during diagnostic testing or therapeutic treatment or to acts committed by a pregnant woman toward her own fetus,” the proposed bill states. “This section shall not be construed to confer, deny, expand, or contract the legal status or legal rights of a fetus.”
At present, Williams is the sole sponsor. She hopes to hold face-to-face conversations with other potential sponsors when the Legislature convenes today.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Legislation, Life&Death
Good luck with this. It will unquestionably never pass the godless, amoral, and diabolical psyches of the vast majority of VT legislators who clearly have no respect for science, no semblance of conscience under most circumstances, and who are completely incapable of comprehending the extant personhood of an unborn baby.
The duplicity of any legislator that could vote for the intentional killing of a baby in the womb by abortion, but make the death of an unborn baby in an automobile accident criminal, would be outrageous. Thank you for trying to make this point, but I fear it maybe lost in a state that has made assisted suicide legal, while penalizing people that have no intention of committing suicide. Good luck Rep. Williams
… and abortion services are “on demand”, while to supposedly prevent suicide, one must wait 72 hours to avail yourself of the Constitutional Right to bear arms…
You are correct that this will never see the light of day since it obviously confers some level of personhood on an unborn PERSON. To people of the left, the only science that is fact is THEIR science.
There science is more like science fiction if you ask me.
Bingo in the front row !
This sums up 80% of the social activist Vermont legislator’s in a nut shell!!
Well, in their defense – nuts do belong in a nutshell.
Amen!
Another worthless time wasting, money wasting, feel good bs bill created by our golden dome whack jobs. It never ends
I think Representative Terri Williams did an excellent job of framing the purpose and language of the bill under the State Constitution, Article 22, “reproductive liberty.” A woman IS denied her choice to carry her pregnancy to term when someone driving under the influence crashes into the woman and the unborn babies die as a result. It’s manslaughter, and there should be consequences. This bill does indeed expose the duplicity, as others have commented.
This bill would confer that the fetus would have more than one status IE protection from death by accident but not from the willful death by the mother…?
God bless Rep. Williams for trying.
God bless her for her courage. We need a barrage of bills like this to not only declare and reinforce the value of every human life—inside the womb or out—but to expose the duplicity of legislators and physicians who virtue signal their platitudes about protecting the most vulnerable among us, while denying the existence of an entire population of the most vulnerable among us.
Any legislator who declines to co-sponsor this bill is cannot consider themselves pro-woman or pro-choice. Rather, they are anti-woman and anti-choice.
38 states have passed similar bills, entitled “An act relating to crimes against an unborn child.” Of course we know that Planned Parenthood and their abortion business will stand in the way of any serious consideration of such a law.
Thank you Rep Terri Williams for defending women who choose life and are hoping to bring their baby into the world without interference from those who choose to commit crimes – and right now, they escape any penalty for doing so.
you have got your nerve trying to shut down the baby parts industry complex/// it is all about money/// shut down the market///
The only thing missing from the proposed legislation is erecting a statue of Moloch and building a giant fire to burn the remains – or is that a pending amendment? Evil is what evil does or proposes manslaughter as a “right” or for the common good. God will be paying a visit to anyone involved in these heinous crimes against humanity. They are possessed by demonic spirits and retribution is at hand. God will not be mocked!
I applaud your effort to expose the fraud that abortion is (murder under another name: choice!).