Children categories
By SADIE GURMAN and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
The gruesome case of a Colorado woman accused of cutting open the belly of a pregnant woman and removing her unborn baby girl is reviving the highly charged debate over when a fetus can legally be considered a human being.
In the past two years, Colorado twice rejected efforts to make the death of a fetus a homicide. The Democratic-led Legislature voted down a bill in 2013, and 65 percent of voters rejected a ballot measure last year that would have granted legal rights to unborn fetuses, the third rejection of a "personhood measure."
That leaves the state as one of 12 without a law allowing homicide charges in the violent deaths of fetuses - and the fate of Dynel Lane up in the air. Authorities say Lane lured a woman who was nearly eight months pregnant to her home this week by advertising baby clothes on Craigslist. Lane is accused of stabbing the stranger in the belly and removing the fetus.
Stan Garnett, the district attorney of liberal Boulder County, said during a news conference Thursday that Colorado law makes it challenging to file homicide charges when fetuses are killed.
"Under Colorado law, essentially no murder charges can be brought if the child did not live outside of the mother," Garnett said.
The legal complexity seems unnecessary to some. "It's literally absurd," said Keith Mason, the president of Personhood USA, the anti-abortion group that spearheaded the push for Colorado's fetal homicide laws.
The abortion debate has hung over the increasing number of states that have made killing a fetus a homicide. Abortion opponents have promoted the laws, which have been adopted by 38 states and the federal government to the consternation of many abortion-rights supporters.
By LYNN ELBER
AP Television Writer
Nick Gordon was "volatile" and emotionally distraught over hospitalized girlfriend Bobbi Kristina Brown during the taping of a "Dr. Phil" episode, series host Phil McGraw said.
"He said he had an enormous amount of guilt and pain" regarding Brown, McGraw recounted in an interview Monday.
The 22-year old daughter of the late Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown is fighting for her life in an Atlanta hospital after being found unresponsive Jan. 31 in a bathtub in her Georgia home.
McGraw said that Gordon entered a rehab facility immediately after the taping last week, which McGraw and the show described as an "intervention." He said that Gordon was "clearly in an altered state of consciousness. I asked him if he was sober, and he said `No.'"
Gordon felt "it was his job to protect Krissy, as he calls her, and that he obviously had failed," and he's distressed because he's been prevented from seeing her, McGraw said.
Gordon's attorneys have said that Bobby Brown has consistently denied Gordon permission to visit her in the hospital. A lawyer for Brown said that Gordon was offered a potential opportunity if he agreed to certain conditions.
Gordon didn't discuss what happened to Bobbi Kristina Brown and wasn't asked about it for the episode airing Wednesday because it would have been inappropriate, McGraw said.
Randy Kessler and Joe Habachy, his attorneys, did not respond Monday night to requests for comment.
During the taping, Gordon veered between incoherence and sounding "normal," McGraw said. At one point, he played a Whitney Houston song on his phone and started weeping.
Asked if the chaotic encounter for TV was helpful to Gordon, McGraw replied: "It got him safely tucked away and into rehab."
Houston brought Gordon into her household as an orphan at the age of 12, raising him and her daughter after divorcing Brown in 2007. After Houston's 2012 death - also after being found in a bathtub - Gordon and Bobbi Kristina went public with their romantic relationship.
AP
To deafening cheers, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller stormed the Valentino catwalk during Paris Fashion Week in a headline-grabbing stunt to announce the decision to make `Zoolander 2.'
The two Hollywood stars reprised their roles as male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel, immortalized in the hugely popular 2001 movie, on the catwalk for Valentino's ready to wear fall/winter 2015-16 show Tuesday.
Stiller appeared in a dark electric blue suit-and-tie ensemble with a navy trenchcoat. Wilson, sporting shaggy long blond locks, strutted in a shiny light blue pajama print outfit with blindingly white sneakers, topped off with an eggshell blue trench coat.
It was such a surprise that the audience immediately whipped out their phones to catch the moment.