Woman charged with murder after refusing C-section - Page 13

[dado]

Originally posted by OnTheFence
So you want her to continue to physically destroy other human beings?

you keep posting statements like that even though NOBODY has said any such thing. it really makes me wonder if you're thinking about what is being posted or even reading it all.

this woman needs help, badly, to reduce the chances of this happening again. she is not the only woman like this in our society: they ALL need help, badly. if you genuinely want to sterilize mentally ill people instead of dealing with the root problem, let's call it for what it is: a policy recycled from the third reich.

[Unreal]

But there are THOUSANDS of women doing the very same thing right now.

Should we get out the paddy wagons, round them all up, and mass sterilize them?

And what about women smoking cigarettes?
Drinking beer? A glass of wine? A sip of champagne?

What about women working a job that exposes them to toxic chemicals?

What about women who take medication while pregnant?

What about women desperarely trying to break the cycle of abuse, but having bad moments?

What about women just having bad moments because sometimes life isn't nice?

Or should we just target the mentally ill that do these things?

Why not HELP women instead of destroy them?

[OnTheFence]

Originally posted by dado
anybody know the source of this quote?



grounds for action included, schizophrenia, epilepsy and the catch-all "feeblemindedness". a diagnose from one accredited doctor was enough to carry through the procedure. before this policy, America was the world leader in forced sterilization. looks like some are looking for us to come full circle.

Maybe you see me that way, thats okay. It is not an accurate description of how I feel. I do however think that if you repeatedly have children you abuse, mame, or deform due to whatever reason -- than your right to be a parent and reproduce should be taken away. I'm not talking a one time you fry -- this women repeatedly damaged children.

Do you think its acceptable for Crack addicts to be having crack addicted babies every year? Yes it happens. And then these children grow up -- and they have bad problems, hurt our children, themselves, damage property, repeat the cycle. Have you ever held a crack baby? Have you ever met a foster mother, who has a sibling group of nothing but drug effected children because the mother kept having them? Do you know how much money it costs taxpayers to detox a baby and support them for 18 years or longer? That these children have parts of their brains damaged that often inhibit them from making right and wrong decisions. What do you think the solution is? Drug education-- doest work. Birth Control -- not used or ineffective due to drug abuse. Incarceration?

[OnTheFence]

Originally posted by dado
you keep posting statements like that even though NOBODY has said any such thing. it really makes me wonder if you're thinking about what is being posted or even reading it all.

this woman needs help, badly, to reduce the chances of this happening again. she is not the only woman like this in our society: they ALL need help, badly. if you genuinely want to sterilize mentally ill people instead of dealing with the root problem, let's call it for what it is: a policy recycled from the third reich.

I dont want her to be sterilized because she is mentally ill. I want her sterilized because she repeatedly abused children and damamged her children due to illicit drug abuse.

[Peppamint]

Originally posted by OnTheFence
While some of you feel more pity for her, I become even stronger in my stance.

Too bad this woman was not sterilized after she had the last child. Abortion would have been better in this pregnancy.

Omg! I am here. Better to kill both babies, eh? That baby will probably be adopted to a loving couple who is unable to have babies themselves. Let's kill all unwanted and uncared for babies instead of allowing the childless to have children.

And I ask you this: who is going to decide what is right and wrong during pregnancy. Does not the FDA say that artificial sweeteners are okay during pregnancy despite studies that show it may not be? Who says that government officials can't be bought?

What happens when it's decided that you can't be veggie or vegan while preggers? You can't have a homebirth or waterbirth? You can't give birth in any way but the lithomy/episiotomy position or a c/s?

Do we allow regular visitation by the government into our homes to make sure we're raising our children properly and be "allowed" to keep them?

Where do we draw the line people? : Not everyone on earth has my best interests or those of my precious children in mind!

[dado]

Originally posted by OnTheFence
I dont want her to be sterilized because she is mentally ill. I want her sterilized because she repeatedly abused children and damamged her children due to illicit drug abuse.

drug abuse and mental illness are closely related. there is no way to dress this up pretty: what you are advocating is a return to a policy first put into widespread effect by Nazi Germany.

[Peppamint]

Originally posted by dado
drug abuse and mental illness are closely related. there is no way to dress this up pretty: what you are advocating is a return to a policy first put into widespread effect by Nazi Germany.

Well said, thank you.

[kama'aina mama]

The evidence of drug abuse is VERY thin. Anyone here who had a C-section would have tested positive for narcotics and so would their baby! That's what THEY GIVE YOU!!!! Without better evidence of prolonged exposure to narcotics that whole line of reasoning is pointless. Besides... the way the DA is talking she isn't being charged with murder for using drugs, but because she allegedly refused the surgery. But that's okay... just keep throwing your own personal issues on her to muddy the water.

[saintmom]

I'm not going to sit in judgment of this woman,it's all so very sad.I will ask what kind of society we live in that allows so many people to fall through the cracks with disastrous resaults like these. At least years ago people were institutionalised,then it was decided that institutions were bad,so they closed the institutions leaving the most vulnerable among us without help.so I'm asking what kind of a society are we?,and if we don't like what we see,how do we change?

[Plaid]

I've been following this thread only off & on and haven't had the time to read every post, so excuse me if this has been brought up already:

What about the father? I think any man having unprotected sex with a mentally unstable woman should be considered at least as guilty as she is. More so, if he is mentally competent. She may not be able to make sane choices, but couldn't he? And he admitted to smoking pot with her! As a society, I believe it is our obligation to take care of the mentally ill, especially when other lives are at stake. If he hadn't impregnated her none of this would be an issue.

[Peppamint]

Originally posted by kama'aina mama
The evidence of drug abuse is VERY thin. Anyone here who had a C-section would have tested positive for narcotics and so would their baby! That's what THEY GIVE YOU!!!! Without better evidence of prolonged exposure to narcotics that whole line of reasoning is pointless. Besides... the way the DA is talking she isn't being charged with murder for using drugs, but because she allegedly refused the surgery. But that's okay... just keep throwing your own personal issues on her to muddy the water.

HOW can that be fair? Abortion is legal. She could have had an abortion and it would have been legal. But, she is being charged with murder because she refused major abdominal surgery! : I really don't get it.

So maybe she does have mental problems, but it boils down to our rights. Does the government get to determine what we eat and what kind of care we receive when pregnant? Do they decide when to put our lives at risk to "save" a baby when they can't know the outcome? So when did they become gods?

[Peppamint]

Originally posted by Plaid
I've been following this thread only off & on and haven't had the time to read every post, so excuse me if this has been brought up already:

What about the father? I think any man having unprotected sex with a mentally unstable woman should be considered at least as guilty as she is. More so, if he is mentally competent. She may not be able to make sane choices, but couldn't he? And he admitted to smoking pot with her! As a society, I believe it is our obligation to take care of the mentally ill, especially when other lives are at stake. If he hadn't impregnated her none of this would be an issue.

I thought the fathers didn't have any legal say? Does a woman have to have the man's permission to get an abortion?

[melixxa]

Originally posted by djs_girl517
Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Once you start allowing the government (lawyers and politicians) tocontrol some aspects of some people's lives, you open the door to allowing them to control that aspect of your life as well. Either the mother's rights come first, or the unborn child's, but it MUST be the same in every case. Not one way or the other depending on whether you think the mother made a good or bad choice.

Yes, djs_girl! This, to my mind, is the crux of this case.

My heart goes out to the surviving girl child and I too wish there were some way to protect unborn children at risk without frittering away at *our* rights and someday essentially hog-tying us in every step and decision. Some of the eloquently formulated posts on earlier pages in this thread have said it all: And no, I don't think these dystopian scenarios reminiscent of "The Handmaid's Tale" are that far off the mark, as in "it couldn't happen here!" Unfortunately, I think this is the direction the U.S. is headed in: paring down individual rights - I mean, the right to refuse major surgery is up there at the top of the list of personal freedoms I value - and giving the state (the government, the "authorities," the "experts," the Man, you name it) greater power over us, our bodies, our lives, our futures.

(I mean, if my baby had died, could I have been arrested for insisting on a homebirth, for not vaxing, for gaining 50 lbs. while pregnant, for continuing to follow my vegetarian diet, for having smoked that single cigarette I smoked after I found out I was pregnant, for drinking a few sips of port or wine at night before bed in my second and third trimesters, for not exercising every single day, for not getting amnio although I was 38, for leaving an established OBGYN practice to work with a DEM - in short, for either a) making decisions that don't gel with mainstream attitudes, or b) not being perfect?)

This case breaks my heart, I am both appalled by and feeling compassion for Melissa Ann, I mourn that poor baby boy, ... and I am deeply worried. Worried that this case, and probably others like it, can and will be used to divest me of my rights - of OUR rights. The phrases "dangerous precedent" and "slippery slope" keep going through my mind, and I see the same in many, many posts here.

Sometimes I wonder if this isn't a bad scenario for which there is no solution. I think that enforced sterilization or court-ordered birth control is wrong. I also believe that forcing someone ill to take their meds or get medical treatment is wrong. I also believe that doing egregious things to harm your unborn child is wrong. I believe that taking away a woman's rights over her own body, her own self, is wrong. I cannot reconcile these things in my mind. They cannot be reconciled. And so I believe (unless laws are passed permitting, say, enforced lockdown of pregnant women addicted to drugs or otherwise flouting medical/societal conventions) that cases like this will come up again and again.

That sucks. It's horrific, tragic. But I see no universal "solution" that will do other than further diminish women's rights - our rights to decide about our own bodies in general, and specifically our right to decide how and where and when we want to birth. Melissa Ann may have made all the wrong choices (willfully, or unwillingly as a result of her illness), but I do not want that to affect the choices I make (am allowed to make) in future.

[dado]

Originally posted by busybusymomma
Does a woman have to have the man's permission to get an abortion?

i read the issue as more along the lines of why does yet another male not have to take responsibility for where and how he dips his wick...

why does all this stuff always have to land on the women?

[kama'aina mama]

Well, like it or not reproduction happens inside our bodies. You can talk fairness and equality til the cows come home, but when push comes to shove the buck stops here. (Could I have squeezed another folksy into that one sentence? I don't think so...) Reproduction simply by the nature of it comes down to a woman's responsibility, therefore it must be her right.

The ironic thing about all these cries to have this woman sterilized (or "her uterus ripped out", such a lovely turn of phrase...) is that it is a virtual certainty that had she pursued sterilization exactly a year ago she would have been denied. Most docs will not sterilize a woman who is under 35 or has had fewer than 3 or 4 children. Big Brother is all over this.

[OnTheFence]

Originally posted by busybusymomma
Omg! I am here. Better to kill both babies, eh? That baby will probably be adopted to a loving couple who is unable to have babies themselves. Let's kill all unwanted and uncared for babies instead of allowing the childless to have children.

HELLO??? I am an adoptive mother to one of these babies. Luckily my son's birthmother didnt do crack. You also dont know what kind of home this child is going too. I hope she is going to a loving home but she may very well be going to people who are not equippd to care for this child down the road. You have no idea what this child may live with or live through. Not only will she have disabilities from drug and alcohol effects, adoption issues, but now her birthmothers history all over the media.
I wish the world was peachy but its not.

[OnTheFence]

Originally posted by kama'aina mama
The evidence of drug abuse is VERY thin. Anyone here who had a C-section would have tested positive for narcotics and so would their baby! That's what THEY GIVE YOU!!!! Without better evidence of prolonged exposure to narcotics that whole line of reasoning is pointless. Besides... the way the DA is talking she isn't being charged with murder for using drugs, but because she allegedly refused the surgery. But that's okay... just keep throwing your own personal issues on her to muddy the water.

I would not have tested positive for narcotics. Nope not at all, especially my last one, I had NONE. You sure dont know much about hospital drug screenings. Or on infants.

[OnTheFence]

Originally posted by Plaid
I've been following this thread only off & on and haven't had the time to read every post, so excuse me if this has been brought up already:

What about the father? I think any man having unprotected sex with a mentally unstable woman should be considered at least as guilty as she is. More so, if he is mentally competent. She may not be able to make sane choices, but couldn't he? And he admitted to smoking pot with her! As a society, I believe it is our obligation to take care of the mentally ill, especially when other lives are at stake. If he hadn't impregnated her none of this would be an issue.

I agree. I wonder where this guy is. Wonder if he sniffing lines with her and drinking booze. He already admits to smoking joints with her. I do think some responsibility lies with him.
Also this woman has been treated for mental illness, and even hospitalized. She can refuse treatment, she is an adult. So then what? Force her on meds? Force her in a home?

[kama'aina mama]

Originally posted by OnTheFence
I would not have tested positive for narcotics. Nope not at all, especially my last one, I had NONE. You sure dont know much about hospital drug screenings. Or on infants.

So what did they give you? Most women recieve something from either the cocaine family or the opiate family. If you did not you are the exception, not the rule. But that's okay, because obvously what is happening to this woman in Utah is all about you anyway. I know a fair bit about the kinds of tests that give quick results... and many of them are broad enough to give a false positive for a wide variety of reasons. If they had the results in time to arrest her about 24 hours after her section those are the tests they used.

[Pynki]

Originally posted by OnTheFence
HELLO??? I am an adoptive mother to one of these babies. Luckily my son's birthmother didnt do crack. You also dont know what kind of home this child is going too. I hope she is going to a loving home but she may very well be going to people who are not equippd to care for this child down the road. You have no idea what this child may live with or live through. Not only will she have disabilities from drug and alcohol effects, adoption issues, but now her birthmothers history all over the media.
I wish the world was peachy but its not.

And you do not know as an absolute that this child IS going to be damaged...

There are mothers on this board who have smoked a little pot while pg.. Their children are fine.. I have a friend who smokes through her entire pregnancy, and while she has low birth weight babies.. They too are ok.. I have a drink while pregnant.. More than one, but never more than 1 a week per my OB's instructions.. Should I not be allowed to procreate?? Should anyone else be able to say.. I should not be able to bear children..

My SIL got pg by a boy who has 4 other children.. Got an STD and delivered that child at 26 weeks gestationally.. He was in NICU for 3 months.. He is a joy of a child.. She got pg while her son was in the NICU and now has a daughter.. Both children have been taken away by the state.. She is an unfit mother, but should her right to reproduce be taken from her?? No.. Why?? Because someday she MAY grow up..

We do NOT get to choose this for someone else lest someone gets to choose it for us..

THIS CASE IS ABOUT A WOMAN WHO REFUSED A MEDICAL PROCEDURE!!! It is not about anything else.. That is all they have on her.. It is NOT against the law to get caught with drugs in your system... It is NOT against the law to drink.. Is it morally right.. NO.. Is it a crime against humanity.. Probably... Is she guilty of Murder.. No..


Warm Squishy Feelings..

Dyan