Maybe political correctness can’t kill you, but in progressive Boulder County it is protecting a baby killer from prosecution for murder.

On March 18, Michelle Wilkins, a woman 34 weeks pregnant, was lured to a private home in Longmont to purchase baby clothes. Wilkins was attacked, her abdomen cut open and her healthy unborn baby, a daughter she had already named Aurora, was violently removed from her womb.

Before political correctness gained full control over media coverage, initial press coverage described the events more or less matter-of-factly. The public learned that a baby had been cut out the pregnant women, not a fetus.

The baby died, but the mother survived. The assailant, 34-year-old Dynel Lane, has been arrested and charged with nine felonies. But the killing of baby Aurora was not a homicide under Colorado law, so murder is not one of the felony charges.

The Boulder County district attorney announced on March 27 that under Colorado law, the horrific act was felony assault and “unlawful termination of a pregnancy,” but not homicide – because there is “no proof of a live birth.” Even at 34 weeks, the unborn child has no protection in Colorado law.

Colorado was one of the first states to legalize abortion (years before Roe v. Wade), and today it is one of only eight states that have no restrictions on late-term abortions. It is also one of only 12 states that do not prosecute the violent death of an unborn child as a homicide.

Those “distinctions” are now raising concerns. The contradictions and hypocrisies in this case are glaring, and public outrage is widespread.

State Senate Republicans, now with an 18-17 majority in the upper chamber, are talking about new legislation to correct the gap in the law. While Democrats still control the second chamber, some of them are troubled by the Longmont case and would welcome a “fix” – if it does not threaten “abortion rights” directly.

Everyone but the most extreme abortion advocates understands that the baby was undoubtedly healthy and alive when ripped from her mother’s womb, and died as a direct result of the attacker’s actions. Nevertheless, the politically correct view is dominant in many circles: while a pregnancy was “terminated,” no human life was taken – or no human life deserving of legal protection. What is new is that the Longmont murder has exposed the callous inhumanity of that clever fiction.

The concern in liberal circles is that any legal protection afforded the unborn baby itself may undermine the woman’s right to an abortion. Trying to square that circle, in 2013 Democrats passed legislation creating a new felony called “unlawful termination of a pregnancy.” A Democratic state legislator has said that new law “is working well” in the Longmont case.

But that is suddenly a minority view. Under that 2013 statute, it is violence against the mother that is punished while the unborn child itself still has no protection. The statute says: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to confer personhood, or any rights associated with that status, on a human being at any time prior to live birth.” Hence, no homicide charge against Dynel Lane.

In the current Longmont case, the county coroner’s initial finding is that there is no evidence the baby lived after the violent removal from the mother’s womb. Although it strains credulity to assert the assailant removed a dead baby from the woman’s womb, that’s the district attorney’s story and he’s sticking to it.

A mother was attacked, her unborn baby was murdered, but only one crime is being prosecuted. The district attorney’s decision to not call it murder has caused almost as much outrage as the horrific crime itself.

Simply put, not filing murder charges in this case violates the community’s sense of justice. “Justice for baby Aurora!” demands a change in the law.

If the law does not allow Coloradans to call it murder because the law cannot call it a baby until after it is born, then the law makes the community an accomplice in both the lie and the murder.

After this especially heinous murder, that is no longer acceptable. Maybe not even in Boulder.