A person who hurts a pregnant woman and causes her unborn child’s death or injury would face additional charges under a bill that got an initial nod from the House today.

House Bill 1130 sparked a ferocious debate, with Democrats arguing the bill conferred “personhood” status on a fetus and could be interpreted as criminalizing abortion.

They also claimed the measure amounted to another battle in the war on women, a contention dismissed by the sponsor, Rep. Janak Joshi, R-Colorado Springs.

“If Democrats want to shield offenders who commit crimes against pregnant women, that’s their prerogative,” he said. “If a pregnant women is beaten by an abusive husband or killed by a drunk driver, and her child does not survive, the perpetrator should not get away with those crimes.”

In those situations, a suspect could be charged with a crime against the mother, but there is no separate charge for injuring or killing her unborn child.

The Republican-controlled House could take a formal vote on the measure as early as Monday. Most lawmakers expect it to pass, but the question is what happens when the measure goes to the Democrat-controlled Senate where a similar bill died in committee earlier this session.

A bipartisan bill introduced last year also called for a separate charge for killing an unborn child in the commission of a crime, but it include a sentence that read, “The bill does not confer the status of ‘person’ upon a human embryo, fetus, or unborn child at any stage of development prior to live birth.”

Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, ended up killing his own bill after Colorado Right to Life accused him of conceding the “battle with the liberal, Godless, left-wing abortion industry.”

Waller said Joshi’s bill is a similar to a law in California, “a very progressive state,” and 33 other states.

Joshi argued his bill wasn’t about conveying “personhood” on a fetus, but Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, disagreed. She pointed out the measure refers to causing the “death or injury to an unborn member of the species homo sapiens.”

“That’s not defined in our criminal statutes,” she said. “This just feels like another attack on women, but women are watching.”

Coloradans in 2008 and 2010 defeated constitutional measures that would have established personhood.

“This is personhood, plain and simple,” said Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver.

Colorado’s lack of a fetal homicide law was highlighted in December 2010 when a hit-and-run driver injured a pedestrian in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood who was 34 weeks pregnant. Doctors delivered the Denver woman’s baby boy, but he did not survive.

The driver was never caught, but lawmakers pointed out even if there were an arrest the defendant could not be charged for the child’s death.

Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327 or lbartels@denverpost.com