Andrea Yates

I'm not very clear on why she's getting a new trial. I'm afraid I'm also notoriously unsympathetic for people who make a series of decisions as she did, then kill their children "in the name of God". What bothered me about her first case - besides all those dead children, of course - is that our system is hell bent on punishment with little concern for mental illness' involvement in the crimes. But I don't find Andrea Yates more deserving of special treatment than men in similar situations, although people rally behind her because she's a female. If it had been Yates' husband rather than Yates herself, there would be no new trial.

Looking back at the case, it's easy to feel that someone should have intervened. Yates should never have continued having children with the severity of her illness and the development of post-partum depression. I don't really buy that her husband forced her. Unless Rusty Yates raped her after removing all possible forms of birth control from her grasp, Andrea participated in the decision to keep having children against medical advice.

But the problem is that you really can't have the state making decisions for who can have children and who can't. "The state" forcibly sterilized women in mental institutions at one point. I don't think we want to go back to that anymore than we want to go back to the time in the 40s-early 60s when we forcibly lobotomized or administered brutal electroshock therapy.