Term limits

This is insane, even in a culture that allows us to play with the language to fool ourselves into believing the unbelievable.

A Colorado judge has dismissed charges against a man who caused a fatal car crash, because the victim, at 8½ months of a pregnancy, had only been scheduled for a C-section to be born, and that had not yet happened at the time of the crash.

What?!

“‘Person’ is a defined term for purposes of the homicide statutes,” wrote Judge Richard Gurley in a March 20 decision in the case involving the death of Lileigh Lehnen, the born-alive daughter of 26-year-old Shea Lehnen.

But this baby was born alive!

“The definition states that ‘person,’ when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who had been born and was alive at the time of the homicidal act,” the judge said.

This is tortured logic. No….it’s tortured, but absent of any rational logic.

Lileigh Lehnen was born during an emergency C-Section after the November 2007 accident that was triggered when Logan Lage, 24, apparently drove on the wrong side of the road and crashed his vehicle headon into Lehnen’s car.

See that? This baby girl was born after the car crash, she survived briefly, but succumbed to trauma injuries.

Lileigh Lehnen lived several hours and died of asphyxia, according to Mesa County Deputy Coroner Rob Kurtzman, who concluded the baby’s death was a homicide and said the collision damaged the mother’s placenta, limiting blood flow to the newborn.

Lage faced a series of charges because of the baby’s death, but his public defender, Will McNulty, challenged them on the grounds that the state law excluded the baby from the possibility of being a homicide victim.

The judge’s order, which was posted online by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, said Colorado law doesn’t allow Lileigh Lehnen to be considered either a “person” or a “child” at the time of the crash.

This crystallizes the bizarre state of denial the abortion mentality has wrought. Or rather, a patchwork of states’ denials.

“This outrageous ruling is a clear example of the hypocrisy of Colorado law,” said [Kristi] Burton. “If a child like Lileigh is not a person, what is she? There is no other answer. However, this case effectively illustrates the current state of our laws in Colorado and across the nation. Some states would recognize Lileigh’s rights as a person, yet Colorado does not. It’s high time we change this and clarify what a person actually is in Colorado. Our Human Life Amendment can lay the needed foundation to bring justice to people like Shea and Lileigh Lehnen.”

Burton noted that had the same accident happened in California, the responsible party could have been charged with Lileigh’s death.

“Once the Colorado Human Life Amendment gets on the ballot, it will go a long way in protecting people who currently have no protection under Colorado laws. This amendment is supported by common sense and by science. As Dr. Jerome LeJeune, an internationally recognized geneticist, wrote, ‘Life has a very, very long history but each individual has a very neat beginning: the moment of its conception,'” Burton said.

That’s basic human embryology.

The terms of judicial service should be reconsidered, while they’re at it.