Pubdate: Thu, 25 Mar 2004
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2004 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Sheryl McCarthy
Cited: National Advocates for Pregnant Women 
http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Pregnant+Women

M MAY STAND FOR MANY THINGS, BUT NOT MURDER

Melissa Ann Rowland won't win any medals for Mother of the Year. But 
prosecuting her for her son's murder is a big mistake.

The 28-year-old Salt Lake City, Utah, woman has a history of mental 
illness, drug abuse and child abuse. She surrendered two children for 
adoption, and had two others taken away by the authorities.

Now she's accused of murder because, while pregnant with twins, she defied 
her doctor's advice that her twins were in grave danger unless she had a 
Caesarean section. When she did submit to surgery about two weeks later, 
her son was stillborn and her daughter tested positive for cocaine and alcohol.

Rowland may be messed up, negligent, a substance abuser and, quite 
possibly, mentally disturbed. But charging her with murder takes the 
criminal law to a place where it doesn't belong - the personal decision by 
a pregnant woman about whether she wants her body cut open.

If Melissa Ann Rowland was mentally ill, and incapable of making an 
informed decision, she certainly isn't liable for her son's death. And if 
she was competent, the law shouldn't punish her for making a decision that 
was hers alone.

I understand the emotions surrounding this case. It sits at the 
intersection of our desire to protect unborn children and our policy of 
letting individuals make informed decisions about their medical care. The 
big question is whether pregnant women lose the civil rights enjoyed by all 
- - because they're pregnant.

"People have very appropriate feelings about pregnancy and the value of 
fetal life," says Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates 
for Pregnant Women, a legal advocacy group. But, she says, "we have a 
problem with empowering doctors' advice with the force of criminal law."

Rowland's murder charge is based on her doctors' claim that her son would 
have survived if she'd had a c-section sooner. But doctors can be wrong. 
The same month that Rowland's doctors were urging her to have a Caesarean, 
so were the doctors for Amber Marlowe, a woman in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 
Marlowe was told her child was too big to deliver vaginally, but she and 
her husband objected to surgery. So the hospital went to court and 
persuaded a judge to order that a c-section be performed. But Marlowe went 
to another hospital, where she gave birth, vaginally, to a healthy baby girl.

An even more compelling case involved Angela Carder, a Washington, D.C., 
woman who was 25 weeks pregnant in 1987 when she was diagnosed with 
terminal cancer. Her relatives and doctors agreed on a course of treatment 
that would extend her life for at least a few more weeks, but which 
involved an increased risk to the fetus. They rejected a recommendation 
that she have a c-section.

The hospital got a court order for a mandatory c-section. But shortly after 
it was performed, both the baby and Angela Carder died. If you follow the 
logic of the Rowland prosecution, the doctors and the hospital should have 
been charged with double homicide.

I don't know why Rowland ignored her doctors' advice - if she didn't trust 
them, if she feared physical harm to herself or if she was just mentally 
ill. But it was her choice to make, and not someone else's. We reach a 
slippery slope when we brand people as murderers based on the fallible 
opinions of doctors. Even the venerable American College of Obstetricians 
and Gynecologists has declared that when a doctor believes a Caesarean is 
necessary to save the baby, the woman's decision should still rule.

"I've been frustrated many times by patients who didn't accept the voice of 
reason, which I always flattered myself I was, and wanted to go a different 
way, " says Dr. Howard Minkoff, chairman of obstetrics at Maimonides 
Hospital in Brooklyn. "But ultimately it is their choice. It is their body, 
their child."

We might wish that Rowland had made another choice. But no one was in a 
better position to make that decision. And unless we want all pregnant 
women to face the threat of criminal prosecution should they smoke, drink 
alcohol, neglect their own health or make medical decisions their doctors 
disagree with, we shouldn't allow cases like this one to make bad law. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake