So the sentence is finally in. Scott Peterson will face the death penalty and be the third person to die in this press extravaganza. It is hard to understand why the Laci Peterson murder trial has remained national news for the last year, but it is even harder to understand the incredible, mind-numbing contradiction this country embraces in the reality of this verdict.

Peterson has been convicted of the gruesome and bizarre murder of his wife and unborn son. And in fact, he was only eligible for the death penalty if the verdict was guilty of double murder. But how can California, with a permissive abortion law, convict Peterson for murder even though it would have been perfectly acceptable for Laci, even in her eighth month, to have terminated the pregnancy? When she does it, it is terminating a pregnancy; when he does it, it is murder.

To try to wrestle with this dichotomy we must ask ourselves: What are our society’s goals in these statutes? Why do we outlaw murder – fetal or otherwise – at all?

Perhaps it is because we wish to have a safe and secure society. For our own safety, we wish to proscribe, prevent, and punish behaviors that, if unchecked, would reduce our society to chaos and threaten each of us in our very existence. Self-preservation and security. Surely this is a significant factor in murder laws.

Moreover, some pro-choice women’s groups assert that fetal murder laws have nothing to do with abortion but are rather about protecting pregnant women from attack. One might think we have assault laws on the books that can carry out that task, but let us take that point at face value.

Do we criminalize murder because it is outlawed in the Sixth Commandment? That may once have been a starting place, but in a country where the location of the commandments near a courthouse can arouse more ire than the actual violation of most of the commandments themselves, that is hardly a sufficient basis for criminalizing murder today.

Even if today’s laws are not based on the commandments, though, don’t we outlaw murder because our Judeo-Christian heritage and culture consider life sacred?

Well that really is the question, isn’t it? Do we as a society still consider life sacred? And does the contradiction between fetal murder and abortion allow us to hold the belief that life is sacred?

Apparently not. Connor Peterson’s life was only of value to this society if Laci valued him – and if California’s prosecutors wanted to seek the death penalty. If Laci had gone to an abortionist for a legal late-term abortion, there would have been no charge of murder. So Connor Peterson’s life is sacred, but only if Laci thinks so.

Obviously, that argument cannot stand. The whole concept of sanctity and the sacredness of life requires that the concept be inviolate, not optional. We do not determine sanctity, and it is not a debatable and malleable concept. Sacred is sacred.

Connor’s life was sacred. That is why killing him was a crime. But if his life was sacred, then how can abortion be legal? One might argue that fetal life is only sacred if the mother wants the child, but that viable out-of-the-womb life is more completely sacred. That argument fails, however, because the California statute creates a charge of murder for the death of either the mother or the child. Thus, both lives are sacred or both lives are not.

I am afraid that the only remaining option may be the true one. If we are trying to make Laci Peterson the arbiter of sanctity, then we have shown ourselves for what we have become: a society that no longer holds life sacred.

We may outlaw murder to protect ourselves from death. We may outlaw fetal murder to protect child-bearing women from violence. But our murder statutes – especially our fetal murder statutes – are not based on the sanctity of the life of the victim. They are based on our concern for ourselves.

Mr. Millard is a former member of the New York City Council.