(no subject)

[holzman_tweed]

Get on the horn to your congress critters about this one early and often. A woman in Utah is being charged with murder on the grounds that she refused a C-section and her baby was stillborn.

Comments

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I may be missing something, but the article you post indicates the living twin was taken from her "shortly after giving birth in mid-January on a child endangerment charge involving the surviving twin." It's not clear that the child endangerment charge arises from anything other than the same theory leading to the murder charge.

I don't see anything in the rest of the article that makes me think it's OK to charge her with murder or child endangerment, either, unless we're going to completely exclude pregnant women from the notion that patients and parents get to make medical decisions for themselves and their children respectively, including the decision to accept a risk of death in favor of a given treatment. I think it's difficult to understate just how bad an idea that is.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there's enough evidence present that the state could have sought to have her declared mentally incompetent and then had a court appointed custodian make the decision to operate, but that's completely different.

[lothie.livejournal.com]

Crap. That may be the wrong URL and I can't find it now. The mother is a drug user (that's why the surviving twin was taken away and why she is in jail) who has a history of violent mental illness and abuse.

Again...I don't want the precedent established that we'd force people to have surgery or not let them make their own decisions. But this woman is NOT exactly innocent, either. It's not black and white.