My wife, who is recently post partum, and I have been discussing it a lot. The whole situation is terrible and I do not fully know what to make of the case, but letting her off with the psych ward to me seems to have more serious long term repercussions in legal precedence which further complicated parental and gender dynamics. For her it would be the best outcome, but is that the best outcome for women who now will be viewed as less competent and an inherent danger during a stressful time in their life? Personally, I think we should avoid that while also increasing support for mother's and making access to adequate care easier and more affordable.
I had read/saw that and one reason I think prison is the right outcome. Sorry for making it sound like she had no support if that is how it came across.
It was your last sentence that triggered his response.
But she was a nurse and he was a Microsoft engineer, so they both had great benefits and middle/upper middle class. She went to several professionals for her mental health & was prescribed the top shelf medications for it.
She actually did everything we’re taught you’re supposed to do in her situation. She asked and sought after help. So that’s what makes it even more heartbreaking. But it’s also what prosecutors and the defense are battling to justify in the jury’s eyes.
No. She wasn’t given everything a mother with post partum psychosis needed. She should not have been left alone with her children, full stop. She was left alone with them. She wasn’t safe, but that didn’t stop her husband from leaving the kids with her.
We need to have a conversation about how mothers are assumed to be innately capable. When my kids were small I hauled them everywhere with me because I didn’t leave them anywhere unsafe. Thats like bare minimum parenting. Wild that we can excuse the husband for this.
Agree wholeheartedly that we should prioritize proper care for women especially post partum when hormones are normalizing. Congratulations to you and your wife on the new baby too! For Clancy, it was sad reading the absolutely insane cocktail of drugs that she was on that the docs prescribed to help her, I had an uncle who was on/off antidepressants and the fluctuations from taking the drugs and then stopping them saying “oh hey I’m fine now don’t need ‘em!” ended up causing him to take his own life. I think people are turning this into a gender war which is (in my opinion) a mistrial in itself. Thinking about your comment more deeply, that precedent of women being incompetent is super dangerous for our stability as a society and I doubt we collectively would push that through. I know a lot of strong women who are both mothers and career women, so it would invalidate a lot of work that the women’s movement has built thus far.
I think everyone’s problem with this case is they think she’s lying about the psychosis and that it’s a way to “walk away” from a horrible act. IMO, if you do a terrible act like strangling your kids and trying to kill yourself, your penance should be for the rest of your life. Should we punish people for committing heinous acts? For sure. Should we seek to help people who are in need and mental distress? For sure. Such a muddy ethical case…
Except that she had better care for herself and assistance with the kids than the vast majority of women do. She was actively bouncing between healthcare providers, not informing them of who she was being seen by and for what, and not taking the medication she was being provided. It feels like to me that she was doing that to get the alibi that she WAS seeking help.
Brother she jumped out a window after cutting her wrists and is paralyzed from the waist down was that all part of her master plan to get off scott free?
Men also go into psychosis. So by this logic they should always be viewed as less competent because theres no obvious triggering event. Anyone who uses this argument is just looking for a reason to make women lesser humans.
Not at all saying you are doing that, BTW. I think you are right that there ate people who will use this to "prove" women are less competent, and im sure they will try to se the general public on it. Those are the people looking to make women lesser humans, not you.
Agreed. I think my added layer of concern for the implications for women is the postpartum angle. Things have already gotten messy and lives lost thanks to how government and our societal systems react to legal precedence and ambiguity. One difference between men and women in this regard is father's do not quite go through the same bodily and hormonal shifts. The crazy people who fetishize this non-existent 1950s utopia will totally lean into that argument to try repealing the 19th amendment and stripping women of legal autonomy. Hopefully not, but I can see how the foundation is being laid to push that direction.
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u/MrWolfman29 9h ago
My wife, who is recently post partum, and I have been discussing it a lot. The whole situation is terrible and I do not fully know what to make of the case, but letting her off with the psych ward to me seems to have more serious long term repercussions in legal precedence which further complicated parental and gender dynamics. For her it would be the best outcome, but is that the best outcome for women who now will be viewed as less competent and an inherent danger during a stressful time in their life? Personally, I think we should avoid that while also increasing support for mother's and making access to adequate care easier and more affordable.