RUSTBURG, Va. (BP) — A Virginia woman who allegedly suffocated her newborn baby hasn’t been charged with murder because the umbilical cord was still attached to the placenta which was still in the mother. According to Captain L.T. Guthrie of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, the case is still under review, but it appears that the intentional suffocation of her newly-born infant will go unpunished.
The death took place in mid-December in Rustburg, and has citizens, legislators and the state’s governor-elect calling for a change in law to close the loophole.
State Senator Steve Newman has subsequently announced that the Division of Legislative Services has begun drafting legislation to ensure that a life cannot be legally taken after a child is born not withstanding its connection to the umbilical cord. He intends to submit a bill during the next legislative session which begins Jan. 13.
“The case law today indicates that three items must be established for prosecution, (1) the child must have been born alive; (2) the child had an independent and separate existence from its mother; and, (3) the accused was the criminal agent that caused the infant’s death” Newman expounded. In this case, tenants one and three are clear, Newman said. The baby was born alive and the mother caused it to die. But because the umbilical cord was attached to the placenta which was still within the mother, tenant two keeps it from being a crime.
As first reported by WSLS-TV in Roanoke, the baby’s grandmother called 911 around 11 a.m. Dec. 11, saying her daughter was in labor.
But deputies who went to the house soon learned that the mother had gone into labor some 10 hours earlier and the baby was found dead under bedding, its airway still blocked.
The baby, still connected to the woman, was full-term with a due date of Dec. 15.
Campbell County investigator Tracy Emerson said he wants to see the law changed. “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 with that baby to kill it,” Emerson told WSLS. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something, it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”
It’s the second case out of Campbell County in recent years to involve a mother allegedly killing her full-term baby. On July 1, 2007 a woman gave birth in a bathroom and when police arrived, the baby had drowned and was found in the toilet. According to Guthrie, the woman was not charged for the same reason.
In 2006, Tammy Skinner, 22 at the time, survived when she shot herself in the stomach after labor pains had begun on her due date, killing the baby. The Commonwealth of Virginia filed charges against her, saying it was an illegal abortion, but a judge disagreed and dropped the charges, ruling that according to the way the law was worded it was not illegal for a woman to perform her own abortion.
Victoria Cobb, president of the pro-life Family Foundation of Virginia, said her organization unsuccessfully tried to change the law after the 2006 case and will try again. The cases likely have different legal remedies — one baby was inside the mother, the others outside — but the appalling nature of the latest case might put more pressure on legislators.
The case, Cobb said, needs to get more nationwide and statewide attention.
“The real issue here is that our society has been so desperate to protect the act of abortion in law that we have created situations like this and others where criminal murder codes are no longer being applied,” Cobb told Baptist Press. “… The history of abortion law is that these codes get written to make sure that the mother can never be charged. That’s the challenge. It’s almost like we’ve precluded the possibility that a mother would actually kill her child at full term or her child after it’s been born. That’s what’s happened in both of these cases.”
“It is difficult to believe that the current Code could have such a flaw that would allow anyone to take the life of a born child,” Newman said in a statement. “While I will not comment at this time on the case in Campbell County, it is abundantly clear that Virginians will demand a legislative cure to this loophole.”
Governor-elect Robert F. McDonnell said he would sign the bill.
“To me that’s the same as any other kind of murder and needs to be covered and punished appropriately,” McDonnell said. “… If the existing law would not cover that as a crime, then I think obviously most citizens would agree that’s something that needs to be changed.”
“No reasonable person can make the argument that a woman should be allowed to kill her nearly born or newly born child for any reason,” Cobb said. “It transcends the abortion debate. These are children that must be protected in law.”
Michael Foust is an assistant editor of Baptist Press.