Life Links 6/10/13

A Connecticut man's bail has been set at $2.5 million after he was accused of hiring a friend to kill his pregnant girlfriend.  Carlton Bryan allegedly wanted Shamari Jenkins dead because she wouldn't have an abortion. 

Calling the crime "egregious," prosecutor Cathryn J. Krinitsky told the judge that Bryan asked a friend to shoot his girlfriend because "the girlfriend has previously decided to have an abortion but decided not to."

According to the warrant for Bryan's arrest, he "begged" Hall-Davis to shoot Jenkins, 20. She was shot in the chest April 29 as she sat behind the wheel of her Honda Accord, with Bryan in the front passenger seat, in front of 137 Magnolia St. in the city's North End.

"Carlton Bryan did not want to have the baby with Shamari Jenkins," Hall-Davis told police. "Carlton Bryan said Shamari initially agreed to have an abortion but changed her mind and she was now four months pregnant."

Hall-Davis also told police that Bryan "wanted to stay with … his other girlfriend," the warrant states.
 

Remee Lee, the Florida woman whose boyfriend tricked her into taking abortion drugs, is working with a state representative to encourage the passage of an unborn victims of violence law in Florida which covers unborn children before viability. 

Before she was tricked into taking abortion pills, Remee Lee planned to name her baby Memphis Remington, she said.

Now Lee and her attorney, Gil Sanchez, hope that name will give new impetus to a state bill that would more often ban crimes against fetuses.

The Offenses Against Unborn Children bill, sponsored in 2013 by state Rep. Larry Ahern, R-St. Petersburg, has failed at least three years in a row.

Ahern said Sunday he might name the 2014 bill after Memphis Remington in an effort to personalize the issue and help gather the support it needs to pass.

                   
Prolifers in Florida are suing over a sound ordinance which police have been using to fine them. 

According to the lawsuit, the ordinance banning people from shouting, playing loud music or making any amplified sound within 100 feet of any health care facility is not only unconstitutional but local police officials also have been applying the law unevenly against Pine and Blackburn by fining them for using a bullhorn near the clinic.

The fine, they say, came after police officers routinely recorded them when they used the bullhorn and even used a laser-measuring device to calculate the distance between the clinic and where the protesters were standing.

After the fine, police failed to provide the women with guidance on how far away they could stand from the clinic without violating the ordinance, according to the suit.

The group contends that the ordinance is so broad that — if enforced correctly — it should land many other residents in trouble.