Pro-choice hardliners really goofed last week in opposing legislation passed by the U.S. Senate that would recognize unborn fetuses as victims when they are killed during violent crimes against their mothers. So says Cathy Young, a contributing editor to Reason Magazine, in her regular Boston Globe column today.

Opponents should have pushed for a more constructive compromise, Young opines.

Refusing to recognize a full-term unborn baby as a person is an extreme position that flies in the face of reality. But "Laci and Conner's Law" goes to the opposite extreme, recognizing the fetus as a person throughout the pregnancy and, at least in theory, enshrining the notion that life begins at conception.

The prochoice movement might have been able to avoid this debacle with a compromise solution: a bill recognizing the unborn child as a homicide victim after viability. (That, incidentally, is the law in Massachusetts; only 16 states make fetal homicide a crime from conception.)

For assaults that cause a miscarriage before viability, more severe penalties could apply without making the fetus a separate victim.

Why was such an option not even proposed?

Unfortunately, many abortion-rights supporters really are ideological zealots who oppose any restrictions on abortion any time in the pregnancy. Yet most Americans, including most who consider themselves prochoice, occupy a middle ground on the wrenching issue of abortion.

In this conflict, extremism is a ticket to defeat.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at March 29, 2004 05:24 PM

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