Call it partial-birth abortion by the barrel of a gun, call it a horrible tragedy, call it murder; whatever you call it, one judge -- the only person whose opinion matters in this case -- said it wasn't a crime and set the formerly-pregnant murderess free:

Oct. 19, 2006 — A Virginia judge has dismissed charges today against a young woman who shot herself in order to kill her unborn child in a case that has angered anti-abortion activists.

Tammy Skinner was a poor, desperate 22-year-old with two young children and another one on the way.

She said her boyfriend wouldn't pay for an abortion, so she carried her pregnancy to term.

Then she did the unthinkable.

Prosecutors say that on the morning she was scheduled to give birth, Skinner drove to an auto dealer's parking lot, took a gun, and shot herself in the belly, killing the fetus in an act of self-abortion. Skinner was charged with carrying out an illegal abortion.

Is Skinner a criminal?

Today, a Virginia judge said no. The charges were dropped, her case dismissed.

Should he have ruled otherwise?

The law in question states that it is illegal to administer or cause an illegal abortion on an expectant mother.

But Skinner's defense lawyer, Kevin Martingayle, argued that the law did not make it a crime for a mother to cause her own abortion. Ultimately, that argument convinced Circuit Court Judge W. R. Carter.

Tammy Skinner is poor, desperate and a cold heartless, evil bitch, quite obviously. This child may have been born poor and unwanted, but this full-term baby deserved a chance at life.

Anyone who has been involved in a pregnancy and has felt the heartbeat, felt that baby kicking and moving around in the mother's belly and has witnessed the miracle of childbirth knows that it takes a truly wicked person to commit an act such as this. To top it all off, the woman tried to pass it off as an assault. This woman needs to be imprisoned for life. This weasel of an attorney committed a criminal act as well as far as I'm concerned -- defending the indefensible.

Apparently, according the Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano the loophole in the Virginia law that allowed this woman to get away with murder exists in 13 states and has been used in several of them to successfully defend mothers who murder their unborn children. Time to close a loophole -- retroactively if I had my way.