Pro-life advocates celebrated the March 25 Congressional passage of a bill protecting the legal rights of the unborn, while gearing up for multiple legal challenges to the federal law banning partial-birth abortions, Catholic News Service reported this week.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is also known as "Laci and Conner's Law" after Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner, whose disappearance and death drew national attention. The California woman was nearly eight months pregnant when she disappeared in December 2002; Laci and Conner's bodies were found the following April.

Under the law, anyone who harms a woman's unborn child while committing a federal crime commits a distinct federal crime against the child in addition to the crime against the woman.

The Senate approved the bill by a vote of 61-38 March 25. It had passed in the House Feb. 26 by a vote of 254-163.

President Bush said he looked forward to signing it into law. "Pregnant women who have been harmed by violence, and their families, know that there are two victims --- the mother and the unborn child --- and both victims should be protected by federal law," he said.

"We applaud the Senate for voting for justice for women and their children," said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, director of planning and information for the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

"No woman should ever be told she lost nothing when she loses her child to a brutal attacker," Ruse added.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., lost by a 50-49 vote on her attempt to replace the measure with a "single victim" substitute bill which would have eliminated language defining an unborn child as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

Her substitute proposal would have increased penalties for an attack on a pregnant woman by adding a second charge of harm to the pregnancy, avoiding any mention of a second victim.

Licia Nicassio, Office of Respect Life director for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, praised the passage of the bill. "It's about time that we have some reasoning come to this debate, which is what we hoped for from the beginning," she said. "We're overjoyed."

Soon after this bill's passage federal judges in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb., began hearing cases March 29 about whether the law banning partial-birth abortion is constitutional.

The federal law signed by President Bush in November was being challenged for several reasons, including its lack of a clause providing an exception when a pregnant woman's health would be endangered by using a different type of abortion.

Supporters of the ban say that a health provision would have rendered the legislation virtually meaningless because of the broad definition of maternal health given by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in its decisions to legalize abortion.

"These challenges against partial-birth abortion are simply an indication of a last-ditch stand by those who are pro-abortion," said Nicassio. "They are scared to death."

Compiled by Michelle Gahee and Catholic News Service.