On 15 February 2023, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled in Commonwealth v Peter Ronchi that the defendant who stabbed to death his nine-month pregnant partner was also liable for the death of the full-term baby.

In a ruling dating back to 1984, the SJC had established that a viable fetus is a “person” when it comes to the vehicular homicide statute, arguing that “the better rule is that infliction of prenatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable fetus, before or after it is born, is homicide”.

The court held that this rule could be also applied to the Ronchi case – even though the fifteen stab wounds were not inflicted on the unborn baby – since “by ending the mother’s life, he [the defendant] destroyed the viable fetus through the cessation of life-sustaining blood flow”.

The SJC, therefore, concluded that the offender could be convicted of double murder.  

This case comes as a real-life example of an issue flagged by a recent BMJ editorial, which claims that “women in the US are more likely to be murdered during pregnancy or soon after childbirth than to die from the three leading obstetric causes of maternal mortality (hypertensive disorders, haemorrhage, or sepsis)”.

The editorial recommends that women be protected from pregnancy-related violence by more access to abortion.

SPUC comment

A SPUC spokesperson said: “It is remarkable that the Massachusetts highest court has ruled that a viable fetus is a person in any circumstance.  

“At the same time, it is disconcerting that a BMJ editorial is defending abortion as a way of protecting women from violence. Such violence is often exercised against women who already want to keep their babies or would want to keep them if they were protected from their violent partner.

“Abortion is itself a violent act, and should not be proposed as a ‘solution’ to other violent acts.”

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