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(LifeSiteNews) – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has upheld two life sentences for a Salem man who stabbed his girlfriend to death and in the process killed her preborn child, who was recognized as a second victim despite Massachusetts law allowing babies to be legally killed in the context of abortion.
The National Catholic Register reports that in May 2009, following a heated argument, Peter Ronchi fatally stabbed his girlfriend Yuliaya Galperina, in the process cutting off blood circulation to their child David, who had been a week away from delivery.
Ronchi was convicted of two first-degree murders, with the trial judge instructing the jury that “killing is not murder unless a human being has been killed. A viable fetus is a human being under the law of homicide. A fetus is viable when there is a reasonable likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the womb, with or without artificial support.”
The defendant challenged his conviction of his fully-developed son on the grounds that he did not directly inflict his blood loss and did not specifically intend the second death, and that the jury instruction supposedly “lessened the Commonwealth’s burden to prove that the fetus had been viable” (among other complaints unrelated to the status of the child).
On February 14, the commonwealth’s highest appellate court upheld both convictions, rejecting his “contention that the fetus was uninjured by the stabbing of Galperina [as] strained at best” and affirming the appropriateness of the trial judge’s jury instruction.
While the conviction for fetal murder and its upholding are affirmations of the sanctity of human life, they also highlight the inconsistency of how life is recognized and treated in many states.
The Register notes that in Massachusetts, abortion is “legal through 24 weeks; and, after that, under certain conditions, including the ‘mental health’ of the mother. It’s also publicly funded, both for poor women who qualify for the state’s Medicaid program and through public subsidies to private funds that pay for abortions.”
Thirty-eight states currently have some form of fetal homicide laws, 29 of which apply at any gestational age. The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, or Laci’s Law, recognizes preborn children as second victims when they’re killed in the course of federal crimes.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade last summer has allowed states to begin working to make their laws more consistent. Thirteen states currently ban abortion at or near the moment of conception; dozens more limit abortion to various gestational points.