Most people mightn’t have thought about it, but it’s no surprise that Scott Peterson, whose murdered wife has been national news since she went missing on Christmas Eve, stands charged with two murders.

Laci Peterson was pregnant, a tragic fact raises the obvious question:

If a man who kills his pregnant wife can be charged with a double murder pursuant to a “fetal homicide” statute, then how can the law permit a doctor and a mother to collude in an abortion?

The pro-aborts, news reports say, are worried about the paradox, and argue that double murder is an inappropriate charge.

Wonder why?

Before answering, some facts:

Over the centuries, pregnant women, and by extension their unborn children, have enjoyed an exalted station in civilized societies, and the law has always mirrored that exaltation.

Twenty-six states, for instance, have fetal homicide laws, and all of them, because of centuries-old common law, punish the murder of an unborn child. As well, common-law has always spared the life of a pregnant murderess. Executing a pregnant woman would unjustly punish the child for the mother’s crime.

Interestingly, a few years ago when pro-lifers pushed for a new federal law to forbid the execution of pregnant women, one writer reported at the time, they offered no examples of a state having done so. In short, it just isn’t done.

The pro-aborts opposed this bill, which shows you how extreme they are. A pregnant woman, presidential contender Al Gore said, has a “right” to carry her unborn child to the death chamber. No, Gore wasn’t kidding, and neither were the rest of the pro-aborts.

No wonder they worry that Scott Peterson is charged with two murders.

The “right” to murder unborn children tops their political agenda. If you call their unbending dogmas a religion, then “we believe in abortion unto birth” is the opening line in their unholy creed.

Here is what they fear: If Scott Peterson is found guilty of murdering his unborn son, then it follows that doctors and nurses, as well as mothers and fathers and grandparents, who participate in or encourage abortion are guilty of murder as well.

The state would not arrest anyone in the latter instance, of course, but abortion could be stigmatized as “fetal homicide,” which is exactly what it is.

Charging Peterson with two murders erects this paradox: A man can be convicted of double murder and sentenced to die if he tosses his pregnant wife into San Francisco Bay. Meanwhile, in an abortion clinic across the street from the courtroom where such a murderer is sentenced, a “doctor,” nurses and a mother can openly conspire to murder a child as it emerges from the birth canal.

But no one will be charged.

Most likely, the feminists needn’t worry.

Using the elastic argot of “rights,” judges have resolved the legal conundrum. Most recently in January, a judge in Pennsylvania presided over another fetal homicide case.

If someone kills an unborn child while attacking the mother, he reckoned, the mother had no choice in her unborn child’s death, so the act is murder. In the case of an abortion, however, a woman is exercising a legal right, so killing an unborn child is not murder.

Such is the Mephistophelean logic of abortion. It conscripts our law, as well as our language, to serve evil.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: [email protected].