As House Bill 156 gets its initial hearing this week before the New Hampshire House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, bear in mind why this and other attempts at fetal homicide legislation keep coming back.
Don’t bother to tell me I’m repeating myself. I’m going to keep right on repeating myself until New Hampshire adopts a fetal homicide law.
Read the Lamy decision handed down by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 2009, particularly pages 9 and 10. It’s about real people, real death, real loss, real injustice.
Joshua Lamy is in prison now, serving time for a number of convictions arising from smashing his car into a Manchester taxi at over 100 miles per hour in 2006. He appealed one conviction, for causing the death of a child in utero, successfully arguing that in the eyes of New Hampshire law, there could be no crime because there was no victim.
The taxi driver, Brianna Emmons, was seven months pregnant. Her injuries were severe enough to call for an emergency cesarean. She named her baby Dominick. Two weeks later, he succumbed to “perinatal asphyxia resulting from maternal abdominal trauma” (State of New Hampshire v. Joshua Lamy, 158 N.H. 511). Those two weeks weren’t enough to make Dominick Emmons a victim under New Hampshire law. The Supreme Court Justices reluctantly recognized that fact.
The Court’s decision, written by Justice James Duggan, was unanimous. Duggan frankly acknowledged that existing law left the Court with no other choice than to overturn the homicide conviction regarding the baby: “Should the legislature find the result in this case as unfortunate as we do, it should follow the lead of many other states and revisit the homicide statutes as they pertain to a fetus.”
That was eight years ago. House and Senate agreed on a bill in 2012, only to see Governor Lynch veto it. Override failed narrowly. More recent attempts have foundered over differences between House and Senate bills.
Ponder the fact that ACLU-NH has called for its supporters to show up in force to oppose HB 156. Abortion advocates in New Hampshire have never been able to stomach fetal homicide bills, even though the bills would not apply to any fetal death caused with the consent of the mother.
The ACLU has nothing to worry about if the pro-life supporters of HB 156 snipe at the pro-life supporters of the Senate’s version. Senate Bill 66 would go into effect at a much later gestational age (8 weeks in the House version, viability in the Senate). Yes, the House version is preferable.
But calling into question the good will of the supporters of the Senate bill serves only to give aid and comfort to people who want to make sure the next hundred-mile-an-hour driver who hits a pregnant woman and causes the death of her child gets a pass for the child’s death.
Attend the February 7 hearing on HB 156 if you’re so inclined: 2:30 p.m., House Criminal Justice committee, room 204 in the Legislative Office Building. You can register your support by signing the sheet on the committee table and indicating “For the bill.” If you wish to testify, fill out a pink card, available on the committee table.
Leaven for the Loaf 