Wesselhoft proposes new legislation "to better protect" state's pregnant women

OKLAHOMA CITY — Saying he wants to “better protect women and unborn babies” state Representative Paul Wesselhoft said he’ll introduce legislation next year to strengthen the penalties for assaults on pregnant women.

Wesselhoft, a Moore Republican, said he would file the bill for the 2008 legislative session. That measure would make it a felony to assault a pregnant woman with the intent of causing a miscarriage, and would set a minimum sentencing requirement of five years in prison for a first conviction. A subsequent, second conviction would carry a minimum 10-year sentence.

Should a woman suffer a miscarriage within 48 hours of the assault, her assailant would face a minimum of 20 years in prison, he said.

Wesselhoft said he wrote the measure after learning how many pregnant women are assaulted each year in Oklahoma.

“We have over 3,000 pregnant women who are physically attacked in this state,” he said. “I think it’s an outrage that any man would attack a pregnant woman.”

Statistics from the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Oklahoma State Department of Health show that in 2005 about 6 percent of the nation’s pregnant women were assaulted. For Oklahoma, that figure is 3,158.

“Oklahomans must protect unborn children and the mothers who carry these vulnerable babies,” Wesselhoft said in a media release about the bill. “It takes a degenerate to try to kill an innocent baby, no matter what stage in life. I hope this bill literally scares the hell out of that reprobate who would physically abuse a pregnant woman.”

While Wesselhoft acknolwedges he hasn’t found a Senate co-author for the proposal, he believes the bill will be popular with the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership.

“I feel very optimistic,” he said. “Most likely our leadership will choose a couple of bills as part of their agenda, and I believe this will be one. I believe we’re definitely going to pass it in the House.”

Wesselhoft could get help from an unlikely ally.

Officials with the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault said they did research for Wesselhoft’s measure, and added they would be receptive to the proposal — provided it didn’t contain “other language which could cause problems for women.”

“I haven’t actually seen the bill yet,” said Marcia Smith, the OCADVSA’s executive director. “But we are supportive of the idea. We hope that it’s in a form that we can support. We hope they don’t put anything else in there that will harm women.”

Smith said the group supports any legislation which holds abusers more accountable.

“We’re going to take a very close look it, anything that holds an abuser more accountable for their crimes is something that we can support.”

Many times, she said, women in abusive relationships are encouraged to terminate their pregnancy, or not seek medical help or child support. “That’s why we’re open-minded to this idea. Often, physical violence to a pregnant woman will result in brain damage or chemical imbalances to the fetus.”

Abused women, Smith said, are impacted by violence which in turn impacts their unborn baby.

Wesselhoft said he welcomed input from the group.

“I’m going to call them when the bill is heard in committee,” he said. “I do want their input, they are a critical component.”

Wesselhoft’s bill comes on the heels of a handfull of other measures — known as fetal homicide laws — which recently were passed by state lawmakers.

Those bills include:

• A bill passed in 2006 which defines an unborn child as a human being, but does not include legal abortion or instances of death during medical, therapeutic or diagnostic testing.

• A revision of the state’s civil wrongful death statutes — passed in 2005 — which revises the law governing the intentional shooting with intent to kill another, and assault and battery by adding an unborn child and includes a penalty anyone who willfully kills an unborn child.

Wesselhoft said lawmakers will get their first chance to review his bill next February at the beginning of the legislative session. “We must not allow over 3,000 pregnant women a year, and their unborn babies, to be physically abused or murdered,” he said.