Today I am ashamed to say that I live in Virginia, and am ever more thankful to be a West Virginian by birth, because the Old Dominion has a legal loophole that lets mothers get away with murder.

The news from Roanoke: “A loophole in state law is preventing Campbell County investigators from charging a woman they say killed her newborn baby. … They say the baby was under bedding and had been suffocated by her mother. Investigators say because the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord and placenta, state law does not consider the baby to be a separate life. Therefore, the mother cannot be charged.”

Prosecutors have lobbied Virginia lawmakers numerous times to close the baby-killer loophole, but apparently they fear the outcry from abortionists.

“Ironically, if the baby had been killed by someone else in an assault on the mother before its birth, that person would have been charged with murder, which sets up a really interesting double standard,” Ed Morrissey noted at Hot Air. “Are legislators in Virginia so afraid of the abortion industry that they can’t take steps to protect full-term babies after their birth? Sounds like Virginians need a new class of lawmakers.”

Or we need lawmakers with class and courage, not to mention a dose of humanity.