Longmont police: Woman's baby cut from womb after responding to Craigslist ad

Longmont Times Call ^ | March 18, 2015 | Alex Burness and John Bear

[Pollster1]

How is this a distinctly different crime from murdering a baby in the womb? Are you saying that if she had simply stabbed the woman in the belly, purposely killing her baby, that would be a less heinous crime than this?

I'm saying that the legal system is more interested in definitions and technicalities than in morals. Purposely killing a baby in the womb is not currently murder under the law. Purposely removing a baby from the womb makes that baby legally a person if the baby takes a breath outside the womb (or takes enough breaths to satisfy the state that it is a living person). For the baby to then die from the felonious assault on the mother or from injuries received during that assault makes the action legally murder. I'm not saying it's worse than stabbing the unborn child, just that it most likely meets the legal definition of murder.

[thorvaldr]

I think we can agree that, depending on facts concerning the exact events that we have not been given, a murder charge may or may not be warranted. I’m not sure a leftist Boulder county prosecutor will be interested in bringing the baby into this at all, though.

I think we can also agree that this particular crime seems more horrific based on society’s reasonable idea that pregnant women deserve more protection than the rest of us and that Colorado law saying that is not the case is senseless.
I would say “we’ll see” but that would involve watching Longmont news more closely than I am willing to, given the short attention span of national media.