Our
View: Parents liable for kid's actions
One
mother allowed her home and 12-year-old
son to become unhygienic enough that her
son hanged himself, another mildly mentally
disabled woman gave birth to a stillborn
child after taking crack cocaine. Both women
have been or are going to be tried for charges
associated with the deaths of their children.
Prosecutors are using laws around the nation
to make parents liable for their actions,
even if there was no criminal intent.
A
woman from South Carolina is the first to
be tried under a new law that makes homicide
by child abuse, even for the unborn, a punishable
offense, and taking drugs with knowledge
of her pregnancy has been interpreted by
the court as being the cause of the child's
death. Although many groups have come to
the woman's defense, the Supreme Court refused
her appeal and so the woman will face her
12-year prison term without a chance for
the case to be reheard.
South
Carolina may have found a convenient way
to punish women who continue to use drugs
while they are pregnant with this new law,
but how far can the law go to prove that
the drug use is what led the infant to be
stillborn. In order to enact laws such as
this that go beyond established parameters,
the state must also go beyond previous ways
of proving such things. Twelve years of
the woman's life are up for grabs on a law
that has been untested, and has implications
that are further reaching than just this.
Women who use legal drugs like alcohol and
tobacco could also be implicated if their
infants were born with major disabilities
or stillborn.
It
is hard to come out against a law that is
set up to protect unborn children who have
few others to protect them. But, this law
could branch out into something that would
make pregnant women potentially liable for
anything that went wrong during pregnancy
that the courts considered wrong. And drug
addiction is a problem that already fills
our jails and prisons with bodies who really
need a treatment program. Now more bodies
will be interred for much longer periods
of time than would normally be associated
with drugs.
If
the courts are going to take this step why
don't they go one step further. Why don't
they make sure that whoever gets pregnant
is in a mindset and time in their life when
they are not only going to commit nine months
of their life but also the following 18
years to bringing up a healthy child to
the best of a human's ability. Otherwise,
you are simply punishing after the fact,
since many children are successfully brought
into the world into a household where they
are unwanted, mistreated or worse, ignored.
In
Connecticut, the mother of a 12-year-old
boy was convicted of risk of injury to a
minor. After being made fun of in his school
for a long time he hanged himself because
of his breath and body odor. Although the
woman has not been sentenced, she could
potentially face up to 10 years in prison.
If
the boy was consistently harassed at his
school why didn't a teacher alert Social
Services about the condition of the boy
so that they could check the home life and
make sure he was given an opportunity to
take care of himself? Instead, after the
damage has already been done, the boy has
hanged himself, and we blame the mother.
Shouldn't the school officials who could
have stepped in when hurtful things were
said to the boy be held partly responsible.
If
we are going to start blaming everyone responsible,
lets just blame everybody, not just the
mothers.
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