By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE death of slain Lauren Saunders’ unborn baby is not murder under Bahamian law, it was emphasised yesterday, amid growing public outrage over the killing of the seven-month pregnant mother-of-two.

Calls have flooded social media demanding two murder counts be brought - one for Ms Saunders and another for her unborn baby.

But National Security Minister Wayne Munroe said the country’s laws do not classify a foetus as a separate life under the murder statute, meaning the law does not permit a murder charge for the death of an unborn child.

Murder, he said, applies only to the killing of a person with independent circulation, while the death of a foetus is treated as abortion.

Some have noted that The Bahamas criminalises abortion in nearly all circumstances, yet its laws do not recognise the killing of an unborn child through violence as a separate offence.

Ms Saunders went missing on Sunday after leaving work early. Her disappearance sparked a desperate islandwide search that ended in heartbreak when police discovered a woman’s partially decomposed body in bushes off Munnings Road on Wednesday. Officials are awaiting autopsy results to confirm the cause of death.

A man has been in custody for three days but no charges have yet been brought.

“Abortion is causing a miscarriage,” said Mr Munroe. “So he would face a murder charge. The facts surrounding his sentencing would take into account that the person he murdered was a pregnant woman.”

He said legal changes to make the killing of an unborn child murder could have sweeping consequences, potentially criminalising medical terminations.

“You would then have a circumstance that, if you are penalising someone for terminating a life and you describe that as murder, every other instance of terminating a life would technically, if you think about it, essentially, have to be murder,” he said.

“So a doctor who terminates a pregnancy would have to be charged with murder, because we would have determined that you can murder a foetus. So anyone who terminated a foetus by any means would have to be charged with murder. That's what the issue was around when the series of offences were put in place.”

While Bahamian law does not recognise the killing of an unborn child as murder, several other jurisdictions take a different approach. In the United States, for example, federal law under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act allows prosecutors to charge offenders separately for the death of a foetus if a pregnant woman is killed or injured.

Nearly 40 states have their own “foetal homicide” or “feticide” statutes that permit similar dual charges. Australia’s Queensland state also criminalises the unlawful killing of an unborn child as a distinct offence, while countries like El Salvador have some of the world’s harshest laws, where the killing of a foetus could result in a murder charge.