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Life and Death at Christmas Time
By Doug Patton
December 20, 2004

At Christmas Time, it seems that the horrific and the bizarre do not take time off. A few years ago, the story was about little JonBenet Ramsey, found strangled in her basement. Two years ago, a pregnant Laci Peterson was missing and later found murdered. This year, the story comes out of the tiny northwest Missouri town of Skidmore.

By now, the world knows the story of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and Lisa Montgomery. They met online and agreed to transact business in person at Bobbie Jo's home in Skidmore, where Lisa wanted to purchase a dog. But Lisa, 36, was not really seeking a puppy from 23-year-old Bobbie Jo. Instead, Lisa wanted Bobbie Jo's unborn baby, and when she left the Stinnett house that day, the younger woman lay strangled to death on the floor in a pool of her own blood, her womb sliced open and her baby removed.

Authorities had little trouble tracking Lisa Montgomery and the baby girl, who, though a month premature, is healthy. A little computer sleuthery revealed the e-mail contacts between the two women. This led the FBI straight to the Montgomery home near Melvern, Kansas. Apparently, Lisa had told her husband that she had delivered the baby herself the day before. (Why he didn't have a better handle on that lie is beyond my comprehension.)

The baby girl was returned to her father, Zeb Stinnett, who told authorities that her name was Victoria Jo.

Reporters seemed uncomfortable reporting the story, not only because of its brutality but also because they could not decide whether to classify Victoria as a human being. More than one radio report, and at least a couple on television, referred to it as a case of "a stolen fetus."

In fact, reporting on a similar crime, the Associated Press reported it like this:

"In one of the most recent cases, a 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Oklahoma in December 2003, allegedly by another woman who pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. The fetus died."

The fetus died.

What does it say about the schizophrenic nature of our prevailing legal precedents that our news media feels compelled to make a statement like "the fetus died"? If that which is being discussed is not, in fact, a living human baby, then how can it die?

How should we think about the fact that the moment little Victoria Jo was cut from her mother's womb, anyone taking her life could have been charged with murder, yet legal precedent dictates that a trained physician could have killed her up to the moment of her natural birth and charged Bobbie Jo Stinnett $2,500 for doing it?

What does it say to us about the nature of life and death in America that the humanity of Victoria Jo Stinnett is so in question that she is still listed in news reports as a fetus, even though she was alive both inside and outside the womb? Was being born into the world in the cruelest manner imaginable not enough to establish her inalienable right to life?

At this Christmas season, 2004, we will again enjoy family, friends and the bounty of life in America. We will prepare to enter another New Year, making resolutions and trying to keep them.

But this year, I will take time to remember a father and his baby daughter in Skidmore, Missouri, and ask myself what I can do to stop the kind of violence that was done to 4,000 other American babies the same day Victoria Jo came horribly and miraculously into the world.

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a speechwriter, policy advisor and communications director for federal, state and local candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet websites. Readers can e-mail him at dpatton@neonramp.com.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.