HIS name was Conner.
As Scott Peterson heads to his murder trial, a parallel battle is being waged in the California courtroom by the case’s littlest victim.
Peterson’s son, known as Conner – a boy killed even before he was born – is fighting for the right to be called a person.
Or is he a fetus?
Even before the trial kicks off, the confounding case against Peterson, charged with murdering his eight-months-pregnant wife, Laci, and the soon-to-be-born baby she carried, has managed to turn virtually everyone in America into a card-carrying hypocrite.
Traditionally ardent champions of women and children are outraged that the alleged fetus-slayer is being tried for two murders rather than one.
Meanwhile, pro-lifers usually declare victory over the double-murder charge – which could bring Peterson the death penalty.
Gloria Allred, the prominent feminist lawyer who represents Scott Peterson’s former mistress, Amber Frey, insists it’s possible to be pro-choice on abortion, even late-term abortion – and support the double-murder charge.
“I don’t have any problem justifying that,” Allred told me.
“When someone other than the woman or her doctor decides to terminate a woman’s pregnancy without her consent, by force or by violence, then I think it should be classified as murder.”
But clearly troubling to Allred’s sisters in the pro-choice movement, now embroiled in a fight against a ban on so-called “partial-birth abortion,” is the fact that the dead baby – or fetus – was at full term. Had Laci not been killed, Conner would be a toddler today. But, had Laci chosen to have an abortion, Conner would have perished just as permanently – only there would be no crime.
“People think, ‘Don’t you have to be consistent?’ Well, I am consistent!” says Allred.
“No matter what the term of the pregnancy, third trimester or not, I think what matters is that it [the death] was not with her consent.”
Still, abortion-rights groups have been tied in knots, faced with the undeniable truth that Conner’s destruction was criminal. Even ardent pro-choicers are troubled by this case. Even me.
It came to a head last year when Marva Stark, president of the Morris County, N.J., chapter of the National Organization for Women laid it out in a remarkably cold statement.
“If it was unborn,” Stark said – referring to Conner as “it” – “then I can’t see charging him [Scott Peterson] with a double murder. If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder.”
Embarrassed by the soulless rendering of its position, NOW’s national office refused to comment, “out of respect to the family.”
Maybe it’s time we all admitted that the death of a person, born or unborn, is a tragedy.
It’s no use denying that Conner’s murder was a crime.