The unmentioned victim at Ft. Hood
After all, there were and are so many. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has been charged with the murder of 12 military members and one civilian. But there was a fourteenth life taken in the violence, and the media haven’t been reporting that.
Americans United for Life attorney Mailee Smith is disappointed that the death of soldier Francheska Velez’s unborn baby is rarely mentioned. Velez was on maternity leave when she stopped at Ft. Hood, where she and the child she carried in her womb fell victim to Hasan’s bullet.
“There are, of course, many unnamed victims of the attack at Fort Hood. Spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends. Each left to suffer and question why, on American soil, their loved one’s life was violently ended,” she said.
“When Hasan took Velez’s life, he took the life of her unborn baby as well,” she said. “As the country looks for justice to be served in this horrendous tragedy, we cannot forget that Hasan can and should be charged with the death of Baby Velez as well.”
The Uniform Code of Military Justice was modified when President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in 2004, Smith explains.
She says “justice can be sought for Baby Velez” because it allows for prosecutors to bring an additional crime of killing an unborn child when a crime involving the death of an unborn baby occurs on federal land, such as a U.S. military base.
The handling of this will be a test.
“The Obama Administration has a moral obligation to press for prosecution of Hasan under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If such a legal path is ignored, it will demonstrate to the world that the President is caving in to a pro-abortion lobby who will not recognize the legal rights of any child in the womb—even a child whose mother desperately longs to give birth,” Vitale concludes.
