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HARTFORD, CT, June 7, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The boyfriend of a 21-year-old woman who was shot and killed in April is accused of hiring a hitman to do the job for him, after his girlfriend changed her mind about having an abortion.

Shamari Jenkins was shot on April 29 after she pulled over to the side of the road in Hartford, Connecticut. While the boyfriend, Carlton “CJ” Bryan, was in the car at the time his girlfriend was shot, police say they immediately suspected his involvement. 

She was four months pregnant at the time of her death. She had planned to name her baby boy Ja'seon Carlton.

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“Any type of situation where a pregnant woman is killed, often the boyfriend or father becomes someone you would take a minimum look at,” said Lt. Foley of the Hartford Major Crimes Division. 

Matthew Allen Hall-Davis, a friend of Bryan's, has also been charged as the man who allegedly pulled the trigger. 

Cases of violence against pregnant women by their husbands and boyfriends are sadly common. Statistically, the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder.

Mark Crutcher, the president of Life Dynamics, who has collected a large amount of data about instances of violence against pregnant women, said that legal abortion only paves the way for such violence. 

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Some men, he said, operate under the tacit assumption that if their partners become pregnant with an unwanted child, then they have the “safety net” of abortion. But, he said, “What do they do when the woman they've impregnated won’t jump into the net?” 

“Our research shows that when a male displays these kinds of attitudes about his partner’s pregnancy, his first reaction will be to demand that she have an abortion,” said Crutcher. “In almost every incident in which violence ensues, its motive will be that she refused to comply.” 

Crutcher highlighted another recent case – that of 28-year-old John Welden, who last month became the first person to be charged under the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act after he allegedly tricked his pregnant girlfriend into taking medication that killed their child. 

Andrew Welden told her that a doctor's visit revealed that she had an infection and gave her a bottle of Cytotec (misoprostol) that he had falsely labeled as “Amoxicillin.”   

Remee Jo Lee, 26, was just shy of seven weeks pregnant with a child she wanted to carry.

She says John Andrew Welden, who goes by his middle name, told her to take three pills a day, but after taking the first she began bleeding profusely. 

Crutcher said that his research has also found that in their coverage of cases of violence against pregnant women, the media often ignores the underlying motivation, instead portraying the case as a simple case of “domestic violence.”   

He also charged the abortion lobby with being aware of the problem of forced abortion, but taking an attitude of “convenient indifference.”

“Their philosophical position seems to be that, even if a woman chooses to have an abortion she doesn’t want because of threats from others, it remains within the pro-choice purview since she was still the one who ultimately made the decision,” he said. 

“For political and public relations reasons,” he said, “those who most loudly proclaim a woman's right to choose have shown no interest in a woman's right not to choose.”