Cases test law giving legal rights to fetuses

[CShine]

Renee Wilson Coulter and her daughter had discussed the unplanned pregnancy at length: Facing the prospect of single motherhood, what should the 19-year-old college junior do? Although her pregnancy was only six weeks along, the unborn child was real to them. The unborn child's death compounded Coulter's grief when she found Ashley Nicole Wilson, her only daughter, slain in a Richmond-area apartment in January.

"Not only did I lose my daughter, but as far as I'm concerned, I've lost my grandchild. I'll never be a grandmother -- ever," Coulter said.

A mourning mother such as Coulter may be what lawmakers had in mind last year when they enacted a state law granting a fetus full legal status as a person, allowing prosecutors to charge two counts -- and perhaps the death penalty -- against someone who kills a pregnant woman.

That law also may allow Fort Bend prosecutors to seek a capital murder charge against Dan Leach II, Ashley Nicole Wilson's boyfriend. Police say Leach confessed to the killing last month after seeing the movie The Passion of the Christ. But the law's application also has raised concerns about how far this new legal weapon can, and should, be taken. Although the law has no direct bearing on legal abortion procedures, its language worries abortion-rights proponents who say defining a first-trimester fetus as an individual with rights creates the first chink in the armor of legalized abortion.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2531032