Mother’s loss spurs battle for Zoe’s Law

Just over a year after the horror crash that robbed her of her unborn baby, the 27-year-old can only describe the child's loss as "still raw".

Jackie was due to give birth to baby Mia in just a few weeks when the car she was travelling in was hit by drug-affected driver Marco Paulo Silvestri.

She was rushed to Liverpool Hospital with a ruptured uterus.

Doctors were forced to perform emergency surgery to remove Mia from her womb. Despite being immediately intubated, the little girl showed no signs of life.

This week, the Illawarra woman was forced to face the man who took Mia's life during sentencing proceedings for the collision.

While she admitted fronting court had been tough, Jackie said the experience had inspired her to take on a new fight - the case for Zoe's Law.

The bill, named after another unborn baby who was killed in circumstances eerily similar to Mia's, seeks to create a new offence of grievous bodily harm to a foetus.

The law was put to a conscience vote in the lower house in November and was carried 63 votes to 26.

Since then, the bill has stalled in the upper house, failing to even be introduced.

Jackie told the Mercury on Friday that if the bill had been passed, Silvestri would have been held criminally responsible for harming Mia.

Instead, Jackie feels her daughter's death has gone unrecognised and unpunished.

"The whole process is heart-wrenching because it doesn't recognise Mia," she said.

"It was confronting seeing the photos of her and I in the paper but you can tell from them that she was a person.

"She was recognised by us so why not by the law?"

While Zoe's Law was a hot topic for several months after it was first mooted, discussion of the bill has gone all but silent since it entered the upper house.

Jackie is hoping her story, and the tens of thousands of people who have read it this week, will get the bill back on the agenda.

She has also written to NSW Attorney-General Brad Hazzard, ahead of Silvestri's sentence on October 22, in the hope of fast-tracking its progress.

"I just want the government to be aware that this issue and conversation about it is back out there and back in the media," she said.

"So often laws are made by people who have no first-hand experience with the issue - I do and I know just having that extra level of recognition for Mia would have helped."

Jackie admits to not being immune to reports of opposition to the bill from several groups who fear it is a step towards further criminalisation of abortion.

But she believes the proposed law and debates about abortion are two separate issues.

"I've heard all these groups protesting that it takes away a woman's right to choose but I don't think it's got anything to do with that," she said.

"I see it being used for women who have had their baby taken away, through no fault of their own; I would have had Mia if it wasn't for his actions, it's totally different."