In addition to the recently-signed Unborn Victims of Violence Act, "Twenty-nine states have unborn victim laws to cover more numerous state crimes, although some do not cover entire pregnancies."

(Source:  Helen Dewar, "Senate Passes Bill On Harm To Fetuses: Critics Say Measure Defines Start of Life," The Washington Post, March 26, 2004, Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25193-2004Mar25.html.)  

"We stand for a culture of life in which every person counts and every person matters. We will not stand for the treatment of any life as a commodity to be experimented upon, exploited or cloned."

(Source: George W. Bush, quoted in Jennifer Loven, "Bush Signs Fetus Rights Bill," Associated Press, April 1, 2004; http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040401/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_fetus_rights_3.

The young children of single mothers do not usually say much about the hardships they face. Many of these children, in fact, say dismayingly little about anything at all.

The delayed speech development of many children being reared by single mothers recently received attention from researchers at the Yale School of Medicine and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Drawing on data collected from 1,605 children born at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, the authors of the new study identify a number of social contexts in which children's expressive language development is likely to be delayed. Those contexts include living in a bilingual home, living in poverty, and living in a single-parent home.

Among children living in single-parent homes, an elevated percentage in every age group manifested delayed expressive language development. Among children 12 to 17 months old, 35% of those in single-parent homes had delayed language development, compared to just 20% of those in two-parent homes. Among children 18 to 23 months, 32% of those in single-parent homes were diagnosed with delayed language development, compared to 18% of those in two-parent families. Among children 24 to 29 months old, 30% of those in single-parent homes had delayed language development, compared to 19% in two-parent homes. And among children 30 months or older, 29% of those in single-parent homes evinced delayed language development, compared to 19% of those in two-parent homes.   Although sophisticated data analysis gives it statistical significance only for the 18-to-23-month-old children, the elevated incidence of language delay among children reared in single-parent homes is clearly evident and should stir concern among child psychologists. In any case, it is precisely the 18-to-23-month-old age group that the Yale and Massachusetts scholars has in view when they note that children manifesting poor expressive language development "have low prosocial peer scores and, in addition, are low in imitation/play, attention skills, and the overall domain of Competence." "Poor expressive language domain," the researchers further remark, "may not be an isolated problem and appears to have very early linkages to the development of social/emotional and behavioral competencies and problems." To underscore this point, the authors of the new study cite earlier studies indicating that "even as adolescents, these children [with delayed expressive language development] continue to manifest poor academic skills."