She shot herself in the abdomen, killing her unborn child, on the very day her daughter was to have been born:
SUFFOLK - A legislator who sponsored the state's fetal homicide law two years ago says prosecutors were right to charge a Suffolk woman with producing an abortion after a self-inflicted gunshot wound killed the fetus she was carrying.The current dispute is whether the fetal homicide law applies to the mother of the victim. There is no debate regarding the fact that this woman killed her daughter. Had she waited a few more hours she would have been charged with first degree murder and faced life in prison. It is amazing - and quite alarming - the difference a few hours can make in the life of nine month old child.There was much debate over the wording of the fetal homicide law, said state Sen. Kenneth Stolle , R-Virginia Beach, and it was believed that another law - producing an abortion or miscarriage - covered a mother harming her own fetus.
"In one of the statutes, we specifically say another person," said Stolle, who heads the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. "In the opinion of the attorney general and the courts committee and everybody else, the abortion law applied to somebody who did something to themselves."
Tammy Skinner , 22, was charged earlier this year with producing an abortion or miscarriage, a Class 4 felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
