Unborn was slain, law or no

Was Ethen Nielsen a murder victim? Or collateral damage?

To most of us, of course, he is a victim no less than his mother, Jenna Nielsen, who was stabbed to death three weeks ago while delivering a local newspaper and USA Today.

Ethen, still in the womb, was due yesterday, July 8.

He was a fully formed, viable baby boy three weeks from his due date.

Under North Carolina law, he is added outrage. He makes the case more tragic.

But he is not a person.

That is the final insult to Nielsen's family.

"They say it doesn't matter," Jenna's mother, Lorann-Marie Blaine, said. "Because North Carolina's death penalty doesn't require more than one death, it doesn't matter."

The fact that Jenna Neilson died is enough to draw the death penalty. So Ethen, by the law's reckoning, is extra.

But Blaine, a practitioner of alternative medicine who lives in Utah, said the death of Ethen, the grandson she will never know, cuts as deeply as her daughter's. She cannot help but think of the big what if ...

"What if Jenna had somehow survived and Ethen had died? Would that have just been aggravated assault?

"It's as if Ethen doesn't count. It's as if he doesn't exist."

Blaine knows that's not the way her daughter would have viewed it.

Throughout each of Neilson's three pregnancies, her sons were as real to her in the womb as if she were holding them.

"Her sons were everything to her," Blaine said.

Blaine recalled how her daughter relished the time with her rambunctious sons, even while heavily pregnant with Ethen.

If there were cartoons to be watched, Jenna was right there next to the boys, giggling away.

If Blaine sent coloring books, she had to be sure to send an extra for Jenna, so she could color, too. When the boys were grumpy or tired, Jenna would delight them with her trick of crossing her right eye and holding her left eye steady.

"That always cracked them up," said Blaine, who last visited with her daughter's family the week before the stabbing.

Blaine said her daughter was thrilled with her job distributing newspapers because it gave her a bit of quiet time out of the house without interrupting her days, which she devoted to the boys (the older two are 3 years and 11 months.)

"She dreamed of opening a dance studio one day," said Blaine, "but for now, she was focused on this part of her life. She couldn't wait for Ethen to be born."

Tonight, family and friends in Raleigh will hold a vigil to mark the life of Ethen and to push for a new state law recognizing prenatal murder.

The issue is a thorny one; it will inevitably stir up the abortion debate. Blaine doesn't care. She knows what's right in this case, for her daughter and her unborn grandson.

Let the state say what it will.

Ethen was a person, a murder victim, who should have, today, been a swaddled newborn.

Police are seeking information that might assist their investigation of Nielsen's death. The family is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. Call Raleigh police at 227-6220. For details about the vigil, visit justice4jenna.weebly.com.