About half a dozen people staged a protest Wednesday outside the pre-trial hearing of Matthew Brush, accused of killing Cassandra Kaake, who was seven months pregnant when her body was found in a burned-out home in February.

Brush, a 26-year-old from LaSalle, is charged with first-degree murder in Kaake's death.

His pre-trial appearance Wednesday was put over until Aug. 21, at which time the judge will decide whether a preliminary hearing will be held.

Protesters say the law should be changed to allow for two murder charges in the case of someone accused of killing a pregnant woman.

The group was gathering signatures for a petition to recognize unborn children as victims in violent crimes.

Jeff Durham, who was to be the father of Kaake's baby, helped organize the event.

"This has nothing to do with abortion, this has to do with justice," Durham said. "I think that pre-born babies should have some sort of protection by law against violent criminals, and they don't."

In an open letter sent Feb. 14 to Conservative Essex MP Jeff Watson, Durham called for a change to the Criminal Code and asked that Bill-C484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, be tabled in the House of Commons again.

The proposed Unborn Victims of Crime Act, which would have made it a separate crime to kill a fetus during a criminal act against its mother, passed second reading but never came to be law because the 2008 general federal election was called.

Dacota Westfall signed the petition Wednesday.

"It's upsetting, the baby definitely could have made it. We actually just had a baby at seven and a half months, she's in an ICU, so that was hard for us to hear," Westfall said.