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When Arianna Goberdhan left her parents’ Ajax home that evening to meet her estranged husband, she reminded her father that the baby room floors had to be refinished by the time she got back.

“I could have this baby at any moment,” laughed the 26-year-old bank employee.

Her hospital bag was packed. The baby clothes were ironed. The crib was set up. And she’d settled on a name: her daughter would be called Asaara.

Her due date was just 20 days away. But neither she nor her unborn child would make it.

After five months of marriage — and a turbulent history including several episodes of domestic abuse — Goberdhan left husband Nicholas Baig and moved back home.

On the night of April 7, 2017, Baig stabbed her 17 times in his Pickering parents’ house and left her and their baby to die — just as he’d hoped they would.

In angry texts leading up to their meeting, he’d written “I want nothing to do with you or this baby anymore,” and “I hope you die delivering.”

Her shattered parents Chan and Sherry Goberdhan had only learned all the graphic details at a recent hearing.

“Seventeen times. What kind of rage is that?” asks Arianna’s mother, breaking into sobs.

“He could have just walked away. She was such a light, she was so compassionate and so kind.”

Baig, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, is set to be sentenced Thursday.

The automatic penalty is life in prison but the judge must decide how long he’ll wait before he can apply for parole.

Whatever the sentence, the pregnant victim’s family and friends will be rallying outside the Oshawa courthouse.

“Two people were killed that night, not just one,” insists Arianna’s mother.

“We’re grieving for two. My child died with her baby and somebody has to tell me why he’s not accountable for that baby’s death as well.”

The leading cause of death for pregnant women isn’t any complication from the birth — it’s murder. A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association found the risk of dying from homicide is twice as great in pregnant women as it is for those who aren’t.

Yet a murdered mother’s unborn child isn’t considered a homicide victim under Canadian law: only if the infant dies “after becoming a human being” when it has “completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”

Goberdhan’s family wants to change that.

Their petition, found at www.ariannaslaw.com , calls on Parliament to pass legislation recognizing that, “when an assailant in a commission of a crime attacks a pregnant woman and injures or kills her pre-born child, then the assailant may be charged with an offence on behalf of the pre-born child.”

Arianna’s father believes such a law could deter other abusive partners from harming pregnant women.

“We do not want this to happen to another family,” he says.

“We’re not concerned about him anymore. It’s not going to bring my child back; it’s not going to bring my granddaughter back. But maybe it will save another baby.”

A similar private member’s bill died in 2016 after opponents argued its hidden agenda was to erode abortion rights.

“Those calling for a ‘fetal homicide’ law (besides the victims’ families) are mostly anti-choice groups and anti-choice MPs, who intend such bills to pave a route to restricting or criminalizing abortion,” argues the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

“This is a totally different issue; it has nothing to do with pro-life or pro-choice,” maintains a frustrated Sherry Goberdhan.

Instead, she says, it’s about justice for Asaara.

When they laid their daughter to rest two years ago, they placed her full-term baby in her arms.

“She was perfect,” her grandmother says.

“She was about eight pounds, she had long eyelashes and black curly hair like Arianna.”

Asaara should have turned two this week.

mmandel@postmedia.com

Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019