The Westside Lounge is tucked in the rear of a small, outdoor shopping complex on a busy commercial street here. Even on a sunny October afternoon, it is dark inside the bar, as it was last March 16 when, according to Racine County prosecutors, it was the scene of a crime that has divided this community on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Deborah Zimmerman, 35, is a self-described alcoholic with a deeply troubled past. In a case that has attracted national attention to the issues of fetal rights and parental responsibility, Zimmerman has been charged with attempting to murder her unborn baby by going on a drinking binge shortly before she was due to give birth.

The baby, Meagan, was born by Caesarean section a few hours after her mother was taken from the lounge but suffered from symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome. She was smaller than normal size, had a depressed bridge of the nose and wide-set eyes. The infant's blood alcohol level at birth was twice the level of legal intoxication in Wisconsin.

The baby is in state custody in a foster home, but Zimmerman is seeking to regain custody. "I see her every day," she said. "This has been blown out of proportion. I didn't try to kill my daughter. I'm an alcoholic."

At a preliminary hearing in July, Julie Mayer, a medical technician at St. Luke's Hospital, where the baby was born, testified that a drunken Zimmerman screamed obscenities at her and told her, "If you don't keep me here, I'm just going to go home and keep drinking and drink myself to death and I'm going to kill this thing because I don't want it anyways."

The case, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, has opened a new front in the battle over the legal rights of unborn children and a growing movement to recognize fetal rights that critics charge is a backhanded attempt to undermine legal abortion. Critics also argue that cases like Zimmerman's could lead to unintended consequences by encouraging more abortions and deterring pregnant women who have alcohol- or drug-related problems from seeking treatment.

"Philosophically, we believe criminalization of a pregnant woman's behavior will only put pressure on women to have abortions and avoid treatment," said Richard Withers, vice president for public policy with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.

His concerns are shared by Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, and for the same reasons. Earlier this year the antiabortion organization failed to win passage of a state law that would have recognized fetal rights but exempted actions by the mother. "We do not like women held responsible for criminal activity" against their own unborn children, she said.

But the Zimmerman case, with its testimony about the mother's intention to kill the baby, "takes this to a new level," Lyons said. "That's the line the legislature may want to draw -- it goes to intent."

Several states grant a legal status to a viable fetus in civil law, for example by allowing wrongful death or injury claims against third parties accused of harming the unborn child. Third parties also can be charged criminally for actions that harm a viable fetus.

In such cases, "if you say a fetus has no status at all, you find yourself in trouble," said Alan J. Weisbard, a professor of law and medical ethics at the University of Wisconsin. But cases in which the action is by the mother rather than a third party are more difficult because they also involve her rights, including the right to abort the fetus that was recognized in 1973 in the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision. "It's a very confusing minefield to move through," Weisbard said.

Since the late 1980s, about 200 women in 30 states have been prosecuted for endangering their unborn children, said Priscilla Smith, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York. Most of the cases involved child abuse charges because of drug use during pregnancy and most were dismissed by higher courts. But in July, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a criminal child neglect conviction of a woman who used cocaine during her pregnancy.

The lines in the Zimmerman case have been sharply drawn in this city. "We get hate phone messages and love phone messages," said Gail Peters, an assistant to Racine County District Attorney Robert S. Flancher. "Sometimes you can't listen to your voice mail."

At the Main Street Bistro, where Zimmerman, who is free on bond and undergoing treatment for alcohol abuse, works as a waitress, her friend and co-worker, Nicki Cihler, said Zimmerman "feels bad. She's very much in love with her daughter. She didn't intend to kill her. She simply had a drinking problem."

Zimmerman, who according to published reports is the victim of three rapes, has long had a problem with alcohol.

On March 16, she was waiting in the parking lot of the Westside Lounge when it opened at 2 p.m. After having two White Russians -- a mixture of vodka, Kahlua and cream -- she told the bartender, Dennis Peterson, of her late-term pregnancy. He stopped serving her and she was later rushed from there to the hospital by her mother.

But Zimmerman apparently had been drinking heavily before she got to the Westside Lounge because at the hospital her blood alcohol was measured at three times the level of legal intoxication.

Lawyers in the case will not discuss it publicly, but they have set out their arguments in legal briefs and oral arguments before Racine County Circuit Court Judge Dennis J. Barry.

Arguing on narrow legal grounds, Sally A. Hoelzel, a public defender appointed to represent Zimmerman, told Barry that Zimmerman had been accused of a "non-crime" because Wisconsin law exempts a woman from charges of killing her own fetus. "Logically, one cannot attempt to commit a crime if the completed act wouldn't be a crime," she said during a hearing last month.

Moreover, Hoelzel argued, the victim at the time of the alleged crime was not legally a "human being," which is defined in the state's homicide statute as "one who has been born alive." Joan M. Korb, an assistant district attorney and chief prosecutor in the case, replied that "it's an obscenity in Wisconsin law that Deborah Zimmerman would attempt to drink her fetus to death without any consequences, but if another had done exactly what she had done, or had provided her, forced her, to consume the alcohol, that person could be charged with a crime."

Last month, Barry ordered Zimmerman to stand trial on the attempted murder charge and a related charge of attempting to cause great bodily harm.

"Others who endanger life by acting under the influence of alcohol or drugs are held accountable for their behavior, including parents who jeopardize the safety of their children," he wrote. "Why should a woman carrying a viable fetus escape responsibility for intentional or reckless acts?"

Hoelzel has appealed Barry's decision to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, delaying any trial until the higher court rules in the case. CAPTION: Deborah Zimmerman is comforted by her father, Jack Zimmerman, before a hearing last month on motion to dismiss charges that she attempted to kill her fetus by excessive alcohol consumption. The judge ordered her to stand trial.