It's inevitable, so let's deal with it now

The media has been going bonkers over the unfortunate story of the apparent murder of Lori Kay Hacking, who had been pregnant for 5 weeks before her disapperance.  Her husband is clearly a suspect, if no other reason than the statistical likelihood that he did it.  To compound the problem, his stories are all over the place, he's been exposed as a fraud with regards to his education, and he's probably losing his mind and will have to be institutionalized.  All in all, it's a sad, sad story. 
Generally, these trashy murder stories are really not the interest of political bloggers, etc. People get murdered, it's human nature, there's not much of a story, so end of story.  In a way, it's disrespectful to the families of victims to gnaw over the gruesome details daily in public.  But this story isn't likely to go away and it has huge implications for feminism.  So we need to start dealing with it now, before we get caught unaware. 
The coverage of the Laci Peterson murder is reason enough not to lay down when things like this happen.  The right wing exerted so much control over the coverage that after awhile one got the impression that Scott Peterson's real crime was less in killing his wife than killing his child, a son no less.  Her death and the death of her soon-to-be-born child were equated so thoroughly that a subtext grew around the story--Scott Peterson snuffed out not one, but two precious potential lives.  His son was about to be born and his wife was about to be born into her proper role as mother.  Any life she may have had outside that of a glowing pregnant woman was difficult to discern from the coverage, though I'm sure she had one. 
The hijacking of the Laci Peterson murder to accomplish the anti-woman end of legally redefining a fetus as a human equivalent to its mother, and therefore writing into law that a woman's life is more precious if she is pregnant than if she's not, was complete except for one public relations bit.  The problem for the anti-abortion movement was that Laci was pretty much about to give birth when she was murdered--they knew the baby's sex and had the name all picked out already, giving him a character of sorts that they could equate with Laci's character.  (Nevermind the whole life she had behind her to actually develop one.) 
But all of this doesn't mean that they have convinced people that balls of cells no bigger than a fingertip are just as human, if not more so, than the women carrying them.  And I guarantee that they are working up a plan to hijack this woman's story to prove that point, too--that her murder is sad, yes, but that her baby was murdered along with her is a real tragedy.  And that it doesn't matter how far along the pregnancy is.

Feminists need to remember this:  The murder of pregnant women by their husbands or boyfriends who are angry for losing control is a feminist issue.  That which drives a man to kill a woman he has impregnated because she has bucked his authority or made his life more difficult is the same urge as that which causes men to use government authority to bring women's choices back under male control.  The reason that pregnant women are murdered at alarmingly high rates is not that we have lost a respect for "life" because of abortion.  That argument only makes sense if you are considering the life of the fetus.  It has always been a crime to murder women and always will be. 
But if we want to help pregnant women who are in danger of domestic murder, we need not to roll back the respect that women as human beings have, but increase it.  It needs to be well understood by everybody that male control over women is simply unacceptable.  That might make it alot harder for a man to justify murdering a wife who is obstinately pregnant in the future.  By elevating the life of a fetus to equal or better status to that of an adult woman, we are encouraging the murder of pregnant women by giving their attackers more reason to see them as nothing more than incubators for the inconvienent pregnancy. 
The right is going to shove these unfortunate murders at us and blame feminism for them, by implication.  We need to have a good, steady response.  I suggest that we remind anyone who asks that domestic violence is best met with anti-domestic violence leglistation and assistance, not with more laws designed to make inroads against women's choice.  And that women's choice is an essential component to reducing abuse and murder of women, all women, not just the pregnant ones.  Because if women can control the number of children they give birth to, they have more leverage to walk out on men who threaten and abuse them.  And reducing the number of women who feel trapped at home is going a long way to reducing the number of women who die in abusive situations from murder.