The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) provides that any person who injures or kills a child in utero during the commission of certain federal crimes (including those in military law) would be guilty of two separate offenses - harm to the mother and harm to the child. The death penalty would not be imposed. Abortions are excluded. Twenty-nine states already have laws that recognize unborn children as crime victims. These laws do not conflict with the holdings of Roe v. Wade and have withstood challenges in the courts.
Going beyond the holdings of Roe, abortion advocates object to any reference to the unborn child as a separate existing being. In the past, they have introduced single-victim substitute proposals that would increase penalties for harm to the mother while completely ignoring the unborn child as a victim. However, when there are two victims of crime, the law can and must acknowledge them both