Adding fuel to fierce debate about abortion, Republicans in Congress are evoking the Laci Peterson slaying as they try to enact the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights separate from the expectant mother.

Laws similar to the federal bill already are on the books in more than half the states, and with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, the federal measure has a good chance of passing.

President Bush has pledged to sign the act, which sponsors have renamed “Laci and Conner’s Law” in honor of Laci Peterson and her unborn son. Laci’s husband, Scott Peterson, has been charged with double murder by prosecutors in California, which has a fetal homicide law.

“In the Peterson case, I’ve heard no one go on radio or TV and say there shouldn’t be an indictment for the death of that child,” said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, the act’s chief Senate sponsor. “The fact is there are two victims — it’s a fiction to say there aren’t.”

Abortion-rights advocates counter the gruesome slaying is being exploited callously as part of a broad strategy to undermine the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Read literally, the pending Unborn Victims of Violence Act is not an anti-abortion measure. It explicitly exempts abortion while making murder or injury of an unborn child a separate offense during the commission of certain existing federal crimes.

Abortion-rights groups nonetheless were alarmed that Congress might, for the first time, recognize a fetus as a potential victim independent of the expectant mother.

“This is one of their strategies — to ascribe legal rights to the fetus separate from the woman,” said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Their intent is to do whatever they can to contribute to the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman’s right to control her reproductive life.”

Twice since 1999, the Unborn Victims act cleared the U.S. House of Representatives but failed to reach the Senate floor in the face of opposition from abortion-rights supporters.

The latest version of the bill has been endorsed by Laci Peterson’s parents and siblings. In a letter to sponsors this month, they said the measure “is very close to our hearts.”

Critics of the bill are upset that its sponsors so readily embraced the link to the high-profile slaying.

Renaming the bill for Laci and Conner “is shameless exploitation of a horrific tragedy,” Michelman said. “It sickens me.”