Bill Needed to Correct Gap in Oregon Law

In Oregon, if you slay a mother and her soon-to-be-born child, you will only be charged for the mother's murder. Unless it is proved that the child took a breath outside of the womb, the baby is not defined as a human being.

Over 36 states have a fetal protection law, but Oregon does not. In 2005, then State Legislature's Kate Brown (D-Portland) sinisterly blocked a vote on making it a crime to murder or hurt an unborn baby.

In the aftermath of the recent savage murder of Heather Snively and her soon-to-be-born son John Stephen, Sen. Bruce Starr (R-Hillsboro) has introduced legislation to make the murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide of an unborn child a prosecutable homicide.

Korena Elaine Roberts, who had been faking a pregnancy to friends and family for months, is alleged to have brutally killed Snively, cutting the baby out of her abdomen and then claiming the child as her own. An autopsy may determine when the baby died - before or after he was brutally cut out of his murdered mother's womb.

"There is no doubt that there are two victims, two crimes and two instances where justice must be served," Starr told the Portland Tribune. "The family of Heather Snively and her son John Stephen will always grieve for two, and the law should recognize that two lives were ended, not just one."

Starr's legislation would create the crime of assault on an unborn child and expand criminal homicide to include the death of an unborn child. The bill would punish the assault of an unborn child with 10 years imprisonment, $250,000 fine or both.

In the midst of universal outrage over the death of Heather Snively and her son, one might conclude that Starr's bill is destined for easy approval in the Oregon State Legislature. Think again.

For the same reason now-Secretary of State Kate Brown cavalierly killed the legislation in 2005, Starr's bill is considered by many as "dead-on-arrival."