Previous reauthorizations of the violence act in 2000 and 2005 sailed through Congress with lopsided bipartisan support.
In annual reports, the Delhi-based Lawyers Collective Women's Rights Initiative monitors the working of the domestic violence act.
(In fact, in 1980, a proposed federal Sports Violence Act aimed at pro sports was defeated in Congress).
If someone commits a very serious crime, a very violent domestic violence act, that's where they'll go".
Both the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act exempt the mother from prosecution.
"We should have no illusions about the purposes of this bill," said Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, Democrat of New York, about the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
For four years, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a bill that would make it a federal crime to kill or harm a fetus, has languished in Congress.
In Washington on Thursday, President Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which advances the administration's anti-choice agenda under the guise of law enforcement.
And what about the Unborn Victims of Violence Act? "I don't think that's what it said at all," Lazio said, when I explained the language of the bill.
Thursday's decision, viewing the mother and fetus as one entity, she said, "runs, philosophically, counter to the movement of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act".
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (which is similar to bills introduced in many states) creates a new offence: killing or injuring a fetus during the commission of a federal crime.
