The Stinnett case is unusual, but violence against pregnant women -- usually committed by the biological fathers -- is not. According to The Washington Post, homicide is the leading cause of death in pregnant women. It is partly because the boyfriends or lovers decide they don't want the "fetus." As the Post put it in explaining one typical murder, the father "at first denied it was his child, then pressed for an abortion, then plotted murder." "It seems to me that these guys hope against hope for a miscarriage or an abortion, but when everything else fails, they take the life of the woman to avoid having the baby," Jack Levin of Northeastern University told the Post.
When we mourn not just for the women, but for the babies destroyed in such terrible acts, we commit a kind of transgression against the strictest pro-choice orthodoxy. Pro-choicers have a hard time explaining why, if Bill Clinton was right that abortion should be "legal, safe and rare," the practice should be rare. One reason is that there is a continuity between the "fetus" and "baby."
Otherwise, why do we rejoice over ultrasound images of the unborn? Why do we give them names? Why do we pray for their health and happiness? Why are we so quick to go from calling them fetuses to babies?