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Press Release   One Victim Or Two?  House To Vote On Laci and Connor's Law. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  February 25, 2004 The Following Statement Can Be Attributed To Nevada LIFE President Don Nelson. The Unborn Victims Of Violence Act known as Laci and Connor’s law for Laci Peterson and her murdered unborn son, Conner, will be voted on by the United States House of Representatives on February 26th.  This bill has been named Laci and Conner’s Law at the request of Dennis and Sharon Rocha-Laci’s parents and Conner’s grandparents.  It has passed in the House previously in 1999 and 2001 but has not come for a vote in the Senate.  This act is needed to give proper dignity and justice to unborn children and their families when unborn children are victims of violence. This act will allow federal and military prosecutors to bring charges on behalf of a "child in utero" when he or she is a victim of a violent federal or military crime.  It recognizes that there are two victims instead of one. 15 states recognize the unborn child as a homicide victim throughout pre-natal development.  13 others (including Nevada) recognize fetal homicide for part of pregnancy. An alternative single victim bill by California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren is misnamed the Motherhood Protection Act.  It is misnamed because it says there is no second victim and hence no mother to begin with.  It tells victims of violence while pregnant that they were not mothers after all.  In a letter to Senator John Kerry who opposes this act, Laci’s mother wrote, “Please understand how adoption of such a single-victim proposal would be a painful blow to those, like me, who are left to grieve after a two-victim crime, because Congress would be saying that Conner and other innocent victims like him are not really victims -- indeed, that they never really existed at all.  But our grandson did live.  He had a name, he was loved, and his life was violently taken from him before he ever saw the sun. “And what about mothers who survive criminal attacks but lose their babies?  I don't understand how any senator can vote to force prosecutors to tell such a grieving mother that she didn't really lose a baby -- when she knows to the depths of her soul that she did.”  ###