perfidy

A mentally ill woman in Utah has been charged with murder of one of her unborn twins after she refused her doctor's advice to deliver her twins via Caeserian section. One of the twins died of an apparent infection two days before she delivered naturally. The woman was warned repeatedly that in her case, an immediate Caesearian was the only guarantee that both her children would live, and she declined the procedure. There is a bunch of hearsay about what she said and did, and why she refused the C-section, but at this point, the facts is just what the facts is.

Look, I understand and respect the growing concern for the rights of the unborn in this country, even if I think this issue is waaay too complicated for the law to handle. But this case is particularly disturbing for a number of reasons.

First: multiple births are always risky, and the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth is much higher than with single-fetus pregnancies. How do the law and the health care system deal with the implications of a "guilty" verdict, which would set a precedent by which any woman who delivers a stillborn fetus could be charged with murder?

Second: in this country, doctors can only give advice-- they cannot mandate that people follow it. You can't force people to have surgery. Unfortunately, an unborn fetus cannot give consent, and I don't see how a government can presume to speak on behalf of the unborn in every case without compromising the rights of the parents, health care providers, etc. The thorny moral calculus aside, there's the dirty issues of patient insurance, liability insurance, tort law, the costs of health care, patient rights, and hospital rights. It's just too complicated a set of issues to be resolved ad hoc by a patchwork of legal rulings, and I seriously doubt that an omnibus bill speaking to this could do anything but make matters worse.

Third: are we going to charge women with child endangerment for having a beer during pregnancy? For skydiving? Smoking? Sleeping on their back? Eating shellfish? Where is the bright line?

Fourth: this case, like the Scott Peterson murder trial is yet another attempt to subvert Roe v. Wade, which is currently the law of the land, like it or not.

Yet again, the law is stepping into dangerous territory, dealing with moral issues it's ill-equipped to manage. I guess activism isn't confined to the left side of the aisle. I don't like the implications of this one bit, much less the utter freakiness of the whole situation.

[wik] Eugene Volokh, an actual lawyer, weighs in on the legal quandaries.

[alsø wik] For his next trick, Eugene Volokh quotes a reader, an actual OB/GYN on the matter.