He was right. The murder of Conner Peterson was a key factor in the jury's decision to impose the death penalty on his killer, and the state law that allowed an unborn child to be deemed a murder victim created a serious legal problem for the abortion industry, which thrives on the fiction that unborn babies are not human life and are therefore expendable and cannot be treated as victims.

According to juror Richelle Nice, of all the horrendous factors in the Peterson case, the killing of Conner - whom she called "little man" - hit her the hardest. "That was his daddy that did that to him," she said, adding that she decided on the death sentence because of the nature of the crime.

The other two jurors to speak out on the case also stressed Conner's murder as key factors in their decision to impose the death penalty.

According to USA Today, the debate over legal protections for the unborn had an impact on a national issue. Conner, an unborn infant, perished with his mother, and the state of California, along with 29 other states, recognizes the killing of an unborn baby as homicide. As a result, prosecutors charged Peterson with double murder under California law, and multiple murder is a criterion that permits the death penalty.

The decision to charge Scott Peterson with murder of his unborn son has already had an impact on the abortion debate. As USA Today noted, anti-abortion activists had tried in vain for five years to get a federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act passed — until publicity over the Peterson case and lobbying on Capitol Hill by Laci's family got it through Congress. Sen. John Kerry, for one, voted against it.

On April 1, President Bush signed the measure, by then dubbed "Laci and Conner's Law."

Under that law an assailant can be charged with a crime against a fetus if the fetus is harmed during a kidnapping, bombing, interstate stalking or other federal offenses.

Will ACLU Support These 'Civil Liberties'?

As reported in NewsMax.com on Dec. 8, Kathleen Antrim, a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and author of the political thriller "Capital Offense," noted in her column Could the Peterson Conviction Overturn Roe v. Wade? that California's 34-year-old fetal homicide law and the national Unborn Victims of Violence Act "reinforce the 'personhood' of an unborn child and affirm that the not-yet-born have rights, and provide protection for babies still in the womb."

Wrote Antrim: "Essentially, this conviction, and others like it, recognizes the fetus as a separate entity with its own civil liberties. ... [T]he Peterson conviction makes the murder of an unborn child very public."

Editor's note: