Justice & Law Quote by Jerry Weller

“Make it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime” is political jiu-jitsu: it wraps an abortion-adjacent agenda in the language of public safety. Jerry Weller’s wording is doing two jobs at once. On the surface, it’s hard to argue against punishing someone who injures a pregnant person and causes fetal harm while committing, say, an assault or a carjacking. It sounds narrow, commonsense, even protective. That’s the point.

The subtext is a strategic redefinition of personhood through the back door. By framing fetal injury as a separate criminal offense, the fetus becomes an additional victim with legal standing, independent of the pregnant person. That move isn’t merely symbolic; it lays conceptual groundwork for broader restrictions by normalizing the idea that fetal interests can be treated as distinct from, and potentially in conflict with, the rights of the person carrying the pregnancy.

The phrase “during another crime” is a political safety catch. It signals: we’re not talking about abortion, we’re talking about violent criminals. But that boundary is porous in practice. Once fetal harm is established as a prosecutable category, arguments about consistency start creeping in: if it’s a “crime” here, why not elsewhere? That’s the cultural and legislative wedge.

Context matters: late-20th and early-21st century debates over “fetal homicide” laws often surged alongside intensified abortion politics, offering lawmakers a way to claim compassion and toughness simultaneously. Weller’s line reads like that era’s signature tactic: win the moral high ground by changing the legal vocabulary.