1. The Unborn Child Law -The unborn child law, also known as the Laci and Connors law, was passed on February 26, 1997. -This law ensures that if a criminal commits a murder of a pregnant woman, then that criminal is prosecuted for two murders, not just one. -This law is important because there was never a law that specifically protected pregnant women.

2. Similar Laws The unborn victims law is the same concept as the “Laci and Connors” law. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108- 212) is a United States law that recognizes a “child in utero “ as a legal victim. A “Child in utero” is considered a legal victim is he or she is killed or injured during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. This law is codified in two sections of the United States code: Title 18, Chapter 1( crimes).

3. Benefits of this Law This law protects pregnant womens’ rights. This law is important because even though the convict receives the same amount of punishment, it protects women’s rights. This law also benefits the fetus, because even though they aren’t born yet, they should still be protected by this law.

4. Significance of this Law This law passed on a vote margin of 91 votes, the votes being 254-163. This law definitely hit local news, because a murder is very important. It is also important because murders of pregnant women is somewhat rare. This law was significant in the state of California, because since it passed on such a slim vote margin, it was big news because California is such a large state.

5. Outcomes Of Law If this law was to not pass, the law wouldn’t be much different, because when a person commits a murder, they are either going to receive a death penalty or life in prison. This law hasn’t really had to have been used, because murders of pregnant women haven’t been really common. This law took several years to pass with the incentive from Laci’s family, who wrote to legislation for a while fighting for this law to pass. The legislation would allow the federal government to charge people with killing a fetus, if the fetus dies in commission of a federal crime. This is why people who commit women on pregnant women receive two sentences instead of one.

6. Similar Attempts by Congress The House passed a similar legislation in 1999 and 2001 by relatively comfortable margins, but it didn’t win Senate approval. This doesn’t make sense, because legislation allows abortion rights, and people see this as a back door strategy for undermining abortion rights. Because of principals of federalism embodied in the United States Constitution, Federal criminal law does not apply to crimes prosecuted by the individual states.