In a case that is raising concerns nationwide, a woman is being charged with first degree premeditated murder of her newborn infant after attempting suicide a few days before delivery.
The woman, a Chinese immigrant from Shanghai, had fallen into depression after she was abandoned by her fiancee, and at eight months pregnant she felt that she had only one solution: to kill herself and her unborn child.
She neatly detailed her plight in a note left before her attempt, in which she said that she would poison herself and her unborn child and end both their suffering.
However the rat poison she ingested did not kill her, and it seemed not to have harmed her newborn child which was delivered a few days after she was brought to the hospital. Within three days of birth, however the child's brain developed an hemorrhage, and the child died.
The Indiana authorities have charged the mother with premeditated murder using a law that was enacted to prosecute people who harm a child still in womb by harming or killing the mother.
This new interpretation of the law is troubling in that it reduces the mother as just a carrier of a foetus. It is an attempt to criminalize any behavior by the mother that can accidentally or not, harm the foetus. This is dangerous ground: if a mother falls and miscarries is there going to automatically be an investigation into a possible attempt at harming the child? What if the mother accidentally causes the foetus harm or death by taking medication during pregnancy? What about Hiv carriers? Is the pregnant mother to be charged on intent or the result of her actions, voluntary or involuntary, alone?
In addition the prosecutor's office has barred any spectator from wearing buttons in the courtroom with writing that could elicit sympathy for the mother. It remains to be seen whether this attempt will erase any sympathy on the part of the jury towards the mother. However this runs counter to the freedom of expression enshrined in the constitution.
People are wondering why the state is trying so hard to exclude the premise of the attempted suicide by the mother, and the desperation that moved her to act in this way, if their case is solid as they say.
On their part the prosecution contends that the jury should not have to decide on sympathy but on the strength of the evidence presented.
But looking at the case, one cannot help but see a double tragedy: one that started with a suicide attempt and a another one that seeks to criminalize the mother in what appears to be a politicized attempt to declare personhood for the unborn.
source: The Guardian uk 3.8.13
No comments:
Post a Comment