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Panel sets aside fetal death bill

Concerns raised over measure's effect on abortion

Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 10, 2006 at midnight

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A mother whose pregnant daughter was murdered in 2002 cried Thursday after lawmakers effectively killed a bill that would have made causing the death of a fetus during the commission of certain crimes a capital offense.

Afterward, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, started to cry, too. Then he got mad, lashing out at the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee.

Schultheis conceded he had introduced a flawed proposal, saying he thought his House Bill 1128 exempted abortions. But a stream of witnesses testified otherwise.

"I could be prosecuted for murder for each abortion I perform," Dr. Warren Hern of the Boulder Abortion Clinic told lawmakers.

Other witnesses said that if abortion doctors were charged, then patients would be required to testify about their procedures.

Schultheis said he wished opponents had come to him earlier so he could have fixed the bill prior to the hearing.

He repeatedly said it was not his intent to criminalize abortion and he introduced a hastily drafted amendment to try to address the issue.

Democrats remained concerned, however, and voted to postpone the measure indefinitely before a vote was even taken. That procedural move effectively killed the bill.

Afterward, Schultheis blasted Democrats.

"This committee is so ideologue-oriented," he said, although the same committee just minutes earlier had passed another one of his bills, regarding penalties for possession of sexually explicit material.

El Paso County District Attorney John Newsome testified in support of the amended bill, which he said was modeled after a California measure.

"Truly, the intent of this bill was to create a Laci Peterson bill for Colorado," he said, referring to the pregnant California woman murdered by her husband.

"There have been two cases in Colorado Springs where pregnant women have been killed and we have not been able to charge for the deaths of the babies," Newsome said.

The mothers of the slain women asked lawmakers to support the bill.

Erin-Lea Hanson talked about her 15-year-old daughter, Amanda, who was four months pregnant when she was killed in 2002.

"Her killer knowingly took her life and my grandson's life," Hanson said. "He strangled my daughter, dropped a rock on her head. He used a stick to kill my grandson."

The killer, who originally also was charged with criminal abortion, got life in prison.

Carla Neal told lawmakers her 24-year-old daughter, Leah Gee, was seven months pregnant when she was shot in the head in 2003.

Doctors delivered her baby by Caesarean section. Gee lived two days; her son, Jeremiah, lived two weeks.

"He's a real person, a real living person. I held him in my arms as he died," Neal said, holding a picture of the baby.

The suspect got life in prison for killing her daughter, but could not be charged in the baby's death because he "was not legally considered a person under Colorado law," Neal said.

The killer "got away with the murder of my grandson," she told lawmakers.

After the hearing, both mothers were upset the bill died. Schultheis consoled Hanson, who was crying.

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