Her mother, Sharon Rocha, and stepfather, Ron Grantski, looked on as Bush took the last step on legislation that recognizes fetuses as separate victims during violent federal crimes against pregnant women.
A top priority of the abortion opposition lobby, the new law goes further than comparable laws in states such as California.
"Anytime an expectant mother is a victim of violence, two lives are in the balance, each deserving protection and each deserving justice," Bush said in an East Room ceremony at the White House. "If the crime is murder, and the unborn child's life ends, justice demands a full accounting under the law."
The House and Senate passed by relatively easy margins what is officially called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Congressional approval, though, came only after the bill stalled on Capitol Hill for several years.
Advocates credit the Peterson case with helping ignite momentum.
"It's great," Rocha said of the bill.
"It's been a long time coming," Grantski added.
He reported his stepdaughter missing on Christmas Eve 2002, soon after her husband, Scott, said he returned to an empty house in Modesto after a day of fishing on San Francisco Bay.
The bodies of mother and unborn son washed ashore in the bay in mid-April. Police arrested Peterson a few days later.
Under California law, he is being prosecuted on two counts of murder, one for his wife and one for their unborn son.
Now, with Laci and Conner's law, the federal government has a similar fetal homicide statute for deaths associated with other federal crimes, such as those committed on federal property.
Since 1999, groups such as the National Right to Life Committee have sought such fetal protection on a national level. Last year, in what proved a pivotal move, Rocha and Grantski asked lawmakers to name the legislation after Laci Peterson and her son.
Rocha and Grantski made multiple lobbying trips to Washington, including last week when the Senate provided final approval on a 61-38 vote.
They have become old hands at television appearances, too. Wednesday, they appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live."
"There are times that I feel you have to be very cautious about what we say or do because you never know what's going to end up in the media," Rocha acknowledged to King.
Other families witness signing
Joining Rocha and Grantski in the lobbying campaign, and at the White House on Thursday, were others who have lost pregnant family members. Seven stood with arms linked while Bush signed the legislation during the 10-minute ceremony, but Laci Peterson's family drew Bush's special attention.
"They have laid to rest their daughter, Laci, a beautiful young woman who was joyfully awaiting the arrival of a new son. They have also laid to rest that child, a boy named Conner, who was waiting to be born when his life, too, was taken," Bush said.
"All who knew Laci Peterson have mourned two deaths. And the law cannot look away and pretend there was just one."
There were tears as Bush spoke, but also big smiles, and he capped the event by giving Rocha a kiss on the cheek. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, followed by giving Rocha a hug.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, opposed the legislation. He and other skeptics, including California's Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, contend it is really ammunition for abortion opponents.
"(It) now takes the position in law that life begins at conception," Feinstein said during Senate debate. "This, then, involves this bill directly into a woman's right to choose -- an issue that need not be raised and should not be raised in this debate."
Law 'potentially divisive'
Feinstein followed up Thursday with a letter to Bush, urging the president not to use the new law as "a potentially divisive statement on the abortion issue."
Republican congressional leaders and GOP rank-and-file members attended the signing ceremony, with Rep. Dennis Cardoza of Merced one of the few Democrats present.
Grantski said he sees the act as strictly a law-and-order measure. "This is not about abortion," he said by phone late Wednesday.
Grantski said he supports a woman's right to make decisions about abortion, pointing specifically to rape cases. According to him, stiffer penalties under the new law could help deter future attacks on pregnant women.
Cardoza echoed that comment. "To me, anything that puts bad guys in jail for a longer time, I'm for it," he said.
New law covers every stage
Thirteen states, including California, have laws that protect fetuses during part of pregnancy. California's law, written in 1970, protected "a fetus," without defining it further.
In a 1994 case involving an assault on a woman who was 24 weeks pregnant -- the woman survived, but her fetus did not -- the state Supreme Court clarified the law to cover a fetus "beyond the embryonic stage of seven or eight weeks."
Laws in 16 other states, like the new federal law, cover fetuses at every stage of development.
The federal law designates for protection "a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place," and further defines this as a "member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
It will be no defense for an accused person to say they did not know the woman was pregnant.
Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at 202-383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.
Bee staff writer John Coté contributed to this report.
