Fetus case: What a travesty of life

By STEVE RAY
Harte-Hanks Austin Bureau

Little Krystal Zuniga weighed just four pounds when she came into this world.

During the 44 hours she was here, her tiny body was confined to a small incubator in a Corpus Christi hospital and tubes protruded out of her body in an effort to help her survive her first tumultuous minutes.

She was here less than two days.

She will never know the excitement of taking her first steps or losing her first tooth. She won't know the awkward happiness of a first date or a first kiss. She won't attend the homecoming game or the high school prom or walk down the aisle with the man of her dreams to pledge everlasting love.

Some folks would have you believe that baby Krystal never really lived.

They say she wasn't born when the drunk driver plowed into her mother's car, forcing an emergency delivery one and a half months before Krystal was supposed to enter a new dimension of her life.

They say that under Texas law, Krystal had to be born and alive when the accident occurred to be considered a person.

What a travesty of life.

Ask any mother who has carried a child for seven months if that baby is alive and a person. Ask any father who has held his hand against a woman's stomach and felt a tiny kick or watched as a sonogram showed a scrunched up hand open and close.

Somewhere among the thousands of abortions performed each day, and the disregard for human life shown on television and in the movies - we have lost sight that a person is much more than a body able to breathe on its own.

Last week, a Corpus Christi jury convicted a man who was allegedly drunk in the manslaughter death of little Krystal Zuniga.

His attorney told the jury that the law said he was not criminally responsible. She said "the law says that there was no Krystal Zuniga" when the accident occurred.

But Corpus Christi jurors knew better. It is doubtful they even agreed with prosecutors who argued it wasn't a question about whether Krystal was a fetus when the accident occurred. It was a question of whether the accident affected her after she was born.

When it comes to justice, it should not have mattered if Krystal Zuniga was killed one-and-a-half months before or after she began a new part of her life.

For her, her parents and hundreds of Texans who suffer with them, another small life was snuffed out without the chance of ever fulfilling the expectations and the hope that come with new babies.

Lawyers will tell us that the death of Krystal Zuniga may set new precedent in state law.
The outcome of her case could determine whether a person can be held criminally liable for harming an unborn child.

It could result in new abortion legislation because it could set new rules determining when life begins, and abortion advocates fear it will endanger laws legalizing abortion.

Anti-abortion advocates hope it will persuade lawmakers to increase penalties for criminals who commit offenses against pregnant women. Similar legislation has failed in the past.

Those are issues that will be argued over the next year as state lawmakers meet in Austin. It could help to move abortion higher on an agenda where it was rapidly losing steam.

But most of all, lawmakers should take a close look at how state law defines a person.

Laws are supposed to be fair and objective, but that does not mean they have to be cold and uncaring. It does not mean that in any instance law should stand in the way of justice.

That definition of a person must change. We owe it to little Krystal Zuniga.