{"id":332389,"date":"2025-06-06T08:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T13:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=332389"},"modified":"2025-06-04T23:27:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T04:27:02","slug":"teen-sentenced-murdering-woman-preborn-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/teen-sentenced-murdering-woman-preborn-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois teen gets 40 years for murder of pregnant woman and preborn baby"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>An Illinois teen has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/decatur-teen-gets-40-years-214226033.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sentenced<\/a> to 40 years in prison for the murder of 20-year-old Janiah Thomas and her preborn child in 2023.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>KEY TAKEAWAYS:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Mattarion Anderson, 17, was convicted in April of first-degree murder and &#8220;intentional homicide of an unborn child.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>He shot Thomas, killing both her and her preborn child, and injured her four-year-old.<\/li>\n<li>Illinois law recognizes preborn children as homicide victims in tragic situations like this one \u2014 but those same children can be legally killed in the womb by abortion.<\/li>\n<li>Homicide remains one of the leading causes of death among pregnant women.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>THE DETAILS:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In April, Anderson was <a href=\"https:\/\/foxillinois.com\/newsletter-daily\/teen-sentenced-to-40-years-in-illinois-prison-for-shooting-multiple-victims\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found guilty<\/a> of murdering Thomas, who was 26 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. According to WCIA News, &#8220;Decatur Police said in a sworn statement that Thomas\u2019 boyfriend and brother went outside once they were aware of Anderson\u2019s presence&#8221; \u2014 who reportedly came with his brother to the home in &#8220;retribution for an ongoing dispute&#8221; on March 8, 2023. &#8220;Shots were fired a short time later and the bullets went flying into the home. Thomas was shot as she tried to protect her 4-year-old daughter, who was shot in the eye.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Though the little girl survived, she lost her eye.<\/p>\n<p>During sentencing, Judge Thomas Griffith gave Anderson two 20-year sentences for the death of Thomas and her preborn child, set to run consecutively. He noted that the sentences would have been higher had Anderson been a legal adult at the time of the incident. Two other people were involved in the crime; one has been sentenced and one has a pretrial hearing on June 6, 2025.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>BETWEEN THE LINES:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Anderson was convicted and sentenced for the death of Thomas&#8217;s preborn child, but that isn&#8217;t always a given \u2014 especially in pro-abortion states like Illinois. Other abortion-friendly states, like New York and Connecticut, do not recognize preborn children as homicide victims.<\/p>\n<p>In Illinois, preborn children can legally be killed via abortion all the way up until birth \u2014 yet if someone besides an abortionist does the killing, it&#8217;s against the law. This logic-defying concession, in which the preborn child is a victim in one instance but not in another, is unreconcilable.<\/p>\n<p>Homicide remains a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/pregnant-women-die-homicide\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leading cause of death<\/a>\u00a0for pregnant women, exceeding all the leading health-related causes of maternal mortality. According to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smfm.org\/news\/new-national-study-finds-homicide-and-suicide-is-the-1-cause-of-maternal-death-in-the-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research<\/a>\u00a0published by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in January 2025, between 2005 and 2022, of 20,421 maternal deaths, 1,407 were due to homicide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/actnow.io\/G3Bhv6M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-332271 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02-700x251.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02-700x251.jpg 700w, https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02-300x107.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02-768x275.jpg 768w, https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02-500x179.jpg 500w, https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/LA25DefundPP_EmailBannerAd-02.jpg 1167w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Illinois teen has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of 20-year-old Janiah Thomas and her preborn child in 2023. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Mattarion Anderson, 17, was convicted in April of first-degree murder and &#8220;intentional homicide of an unborn child.&#8221; He shot Thomas, killing both her and her preborn child, and injured [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":332434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[4,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Illinois teen gets 40 years for murder of pregnant woman and preborn baby<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A 17-year-old Illinois boy has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of 20-year-old Janiah Thomas and her preborn child in 2023.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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