Deleting Honoree's Contact Record Deletes the Entire Contribution

I tried recreating this on the sandbox, but it did not give me access. We've seen this occur in Civi 1.9 installations with Drupal 5.

We have a site using the honoree option. When making a contribution using a CiviContribute form or through manual entry from the backend, the contribution goes through as expected. If the honoree's contact record is deleted (for example, because their name is spelled incorrectly and it created a duplicate), the entire contribution disappears. We were expecting it to keep the contribution record, but just delete the honoree info.

Thanks so much!