WHITE HOUSE Unborn-victims act becomes law
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, eager to hand another victory to the social conservatives who make up his most loyal base of political support, decided on an elaborate ceremony to sign into law legislation expanding legal rights of the unborn.
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act makes it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. Bush was signing the bill, which took five years to get through Congress, today in the Rose Garden.
People on both sides of the fetal rights and abortion issue have said the new law will have far-reaching consequences.
Abortion opponents welcome it as a step toward more sweeping protections for the unborn, while abortion-rights proponents say the measure represents the first recognition in federal law of an embryo or fetus as a person separate from the woman.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Bush's opponent in this fall's election, voted against the bill.
Bush has said he doesn't believe the country is ready to completely ban abortions; he opposes them except in cases of rape or incest or when pregnancy endangers a woman's life. That position has become a standard line in most of his speeches.
"We stand for a culture of life in which every person counts and every person matters. We will not stand for the treatment of any life as a commodity to be experimented upon, exploited or cloned," the president told GOP donors to his campaign at a fund-raiser in Washington on Tuesday night.