Constitutional rights???
Moms View Message Board: The Kitchen Table (Debating Board): Constitutional rights???
I'm sure most are going to agree with me on this one but this just kills me... Locked up for killing her child yet she continues to become pregnant. Hello, don't they watch them at all? In my opinion she has no right to have a child and upon her conviction she should have been sterilized, constitutional rights? What about her baby's rights? I'm sure this baby will be taken away from her upon it's birth I can only hope it's adopted by a family who loves it as it's mother should. What is this world coming to?
11/08/04 - HOUSTON) — A woman who was acquitted of strangling her infant son is pregnant for a second time at a mental hospital, state officials say.
They said Evonne Rodriguez is expecting a child at San Antonio State Hospital. Rodriguez also became pregnant in 1999 while at Rusk State Hospital after her acquittal.
I was shocked to learn that she's pregnant again," state district Judge Caprice Cosper told the Houston Chronicle in Monday's online edition. "Given that a child is a trigger (for her psychosis) and a potential victim, this seems ludicrous."
Cosper's court has lifelong jurisdiction over Rodriguez, who was acquitted in 1998 by reason of insanity after strangling her 4-month-old son with rosary beads and dumping him in Buffalo Bayou.
The toddler's body was never recovered.
At first, Rodriguez told police the baby, Ramiro Valdez III, had been abducted from a downtown mall bathroom.
Cosper said she plans to look into what can be done to prevent such pregnancies. But she acknowledged the matter is complicated because of therapeutic considerations and constitutional rights.
"Our hospitals aren't prisons; they're there to provide appropriate psychiatric care in a safe and stable environment," said Kenny Dudley, director of the state hospitals section of the Texas Department of State Health Services. "And our patients have rights how they can be treated, which are related to their condition, regardless of whether they came to us voluntarily or following a criminal charge."
Rodriguez, 28, had testified that she killed her son in 1997 because she believed he was possessed by demons. She has been in the state mental health system since a jury acquitted her in 1998. A psychologist at the trial said being around children triggers her to hallucinate.
Cosper learned of Rodriguez's pregnancy after calling San Antonio State Hospital to look into a Chronicle inquiry.
My understanding is that she has become pregnant TWICE since she was hospitalized!?!? I agree that she should have been sterilized. This isn't an issue that she may be able to bear and raise a child someday. She should never be able to hold a child in her arms again. The people that allow this to happen should be thinking about these children and the fact that they will, more than likely, be shuttled around foster homes for the rest of their lives! This is a really sensitive subject for me. Really, what are the chances that this is going to be a problem that can be rehabilitated?!
That is a tough one....maybe they could (on the off chance that someone like that could ever become "cured") compel the hospital to mandate a form of long-term birth control (like implants)?! I don't know...
Who is knocking her up?? Other patients? Why aren't the wards separated? Is it an employee who got her pregnant? Visitor? This seems unreal that it would happen twice! And I agree, it's horrible not to sterilize her. I know that is going to cause heated debate... but at a certain point you forfeit your rights, IMO.
Although I agree that people like that should never have children, I think it becomes an unenforcalbe, unwritable law to try to prevent it. For laws to be effective they need to be clear and concise. So to write a law that says if you kill a child you immediate get spayed or neutered, no more kids for you sounds great. But what about the dad that ran over his child in the leaf pile? What about a mom who leaves her child in a locked car? You can't have laws that say this except in this and this and this situation. I ultimately think that is why abortion is legal, because there are situations that even the strongest opponents against it can see where that might be reasonable.
I think that if a person will mentally never be able to take care of a child and will always pose a harm, why would they not be sterilized? It seems to me like this woman may have a life long mental disorder that would always interfere with her being a mother.
And WHO did get her pregnant?
I also think she should be sterilized. Personally, I think all mothers/fathers who murder their own or other children should be sterilized.
I agree Melissa.
Being a person that was sexually molested at 5, I also think that child molesters should also get that shot that gives them no sex drive.
I remember when I was in junior high a woman, Laura Lee Rice, chopped the heads off 2 of her little girls. Why take the chance that she could be rehabilitated? Why potentially put another child through that?
I would also like to know who got her pregnant.
Emily my Uncle molested me when I was 5. His wife of 10+ years knows and doesn't care. They have had 9 (count em...9) abortions and a few miscarriages. Abortions are their form of birth control..... she is someone who NEEDS to be fixed!
Was gonna push anon due to sensitivity but this is debate and I cant. But I want to point that out. Since abortion wont be outlawed anytime soon... maybe only a certain amount of abortions allowed? Who knows?
Melissa,
It's not true that there is no chance of abortion being outlawed any time soon. There are going to be new appointments to the Supreme Court, which could result in Roe V Wade being overturned. I am against making abortion illegal (It was at one time, and people often had "bathroom" abortions done that were very dangerous), but I agree that it shouldn't be used as a form of BC. It's very sticky territory... no easy answer, but I wonder about the ethics of a doctor who performs multiple abortions on a woman, when the woman is clearly being reckless.
Ditto Amy!
Amy has a good plan.
If they show such disreguard for the life they took why should we assume it is going to be any different with the next child they have or come in contact with.
No, she should not be sterilized. She is sick and a under the care of the state and it would be a huge betrayal of the states power to sterilize her. I don't know if this went on where you guys live but here in the fifties, some people with mental disabilities, physical disbilities, the mentally ill, etc. did get sterilized with the blessing of the state. They did not want "idiots and morons" reproducing. It was eugenics. We can say that this woman's case is special and to us it might be but to others with different agendas, having her sterilized might simply open the door to sterilizing others who are undesirable or present a burden to society. It's not a big jump at all for some people to go from sterilizing one mentally ill woman who killed her child to sterilizing many women just for being mentallly ill or to sterilizing the handicapped who we deem incapable of raising children.
The woman is mentally ill. What she did was horrible but mental illness can cause people to do awful things. It may be a lifelong thing but we don't know that now. The state is too blame here as it's supposed to be this woman's guardian. She should have been on some form of birth control she could not subvert (depo shots for one). She should have been more closely watched. She's in that facility in the first place because she can't have responsibility for her actions. I think any demand for sterilization only makes it seem as if the fault lays only with her and takes the blame away from where it should be focused.
I know it's a hard thing to think of, a child being killed. But I look at my kids and worry about their lives in the future as well. If women like the one above were sterilized, what danger would my daughter be of that if 15 years down that road she developed a severe mental illness or was in an accident that left her mentally impaired?
Thats a good point Dawn but if that were to happen to your daughter, would you want her to have kids? And you mentioned that people with mental disorders can do awful things, to me that means harming a child. Not that they mean to do it but it happens. Its all for the safety of the children, not for us to have rights over who can have kids.
Dawn is right. There was a big push for "eugenics" in the 30s/40s. I recently watched a program on PBS about men who had been institutionalized in a New England state in that period, some because they didn't meet certain IQ test standards, others because their families abandoned them to the state, all in the name of eugenics. They were warehoused, given minimal education and minimal vocation training, and were just kept there until a lawsuit sometime inthe 60s that got these places closed down. I also remember the reports of women with mental and/or physical disabilities being sterilized without their consent. There was also a period where several states would urge doctors to automatically sterilize an unwed mother on welfare when she gave birth to her first child. I also saw a PBS production recently about a program where mental patients were given prefrontal lobotomies as treatment for their mental illness, without consent - at one point this was considered a promising medical treatment and, from what I saw and read, still has some merit in some cases - but not without knowing consent.
As Dawn points out, the question of deciding whether someone should be sterilized without knowing consent is a slippery slope - one we've travelled before. I do wonder (a) why she wasn't put on depo shots; (b) who is getting her pregnant. Seems to me some DNA tests of the baby and the institution's staff would be in order.
I also don't like abortion being used as birth control. But again, it is a slippery slope. My definition of inappropriate is someone else's definition of appropriate. Frankly, with a couple as irresponsible as the people Melissa describes, seems to me the only form of birth control that would work is sterilization.
Thats a good point Dawn but if that were to happen to your daughter, would you want her to have kids?
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No, of course not. But there are methods of birth control that can be administered that would solve the problem without an invasive surgery that leaves a person forever infertile. I think Gina's bang on with the idea that the staff needs some investigation, at the very least they didn't notice she was having sex while able to concieve.
Its all for the safety of the children, not for us to have rights over who can have kids.
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But if you're sterilizing people, even using children's safety as an excuse, you're in effect dictating who can and can't have kids. We spend a lot of time worrying about how to keep our kids safe today and not looking a couple of decades down the road to see what world we might be creating for our children when they're grown. Rights aren't personal property that we can remove from some person and still have ourselves. They're communal and if we begin to remove the protection they offer to the most vunerable (however horrid we find them) members of our society we're chipping away at our own rights and those of our kids.
I really don't see this as an issue that sterilization could resolve. It's a problem with the system that oversees that women's life. The woman is sad and sick and needs care and control that the institution she's in can't seem to provide. I wonder how many other patients with severe illnesses are facing pregnancy and losing babies because the people that are responsible for them aren't doing a good enough job.
I can't add much- I pretty much agree with all that has been said.
Abortion shouldn't be used as BC, but there is no law against that.
There should be no law saying who can reproduce and who can't. Don't they do that in Communist China?
The severely mentally ill can't care for themselves much less a baby. The problem with the mentally ill is that they won't be treated until they come forward to a mental facility or until they hurt or kill themselves or someone else. Otherwise, we often don't know of their mental illness.
The State was responsible for the woman in the story, since she is incapable of being responsible for herself. The State clearly failed.
We look at sex offenders and we REALLY want them to pay. The first thing that comes to mind is sterilization. It seems to me that this is mainly a form of revenge. BC should suffice for the females. For the males... I'm open to suggestions, since the only known form of BC for males is sterilization.
Sterilizing a sex offender is not to prevent them from having children, it is to impede their sex drive so they do not molest again. A vasectomy is not going to accomplish that, nor is BC. Chemical castration is debated, but I'm not sure if it really works. As far as permanently institutionalized people, why should the tax payers pay for the birth, and care of a child conceeved in that setting? They have no business being pregnant.
Ditto Unschoolmom almost verbatim. And...I agree that testing within the system needs to be done to find out who the father is.
As far as permanently institutionalized people, why should the tax payers pay for the birth, and care of a child conceeved in that setting? They have no business being pregnant.
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The tax payers should pay (or rather make sure they hold the system accountable that let a person get pregnant in the first place) because it's our medical system and gov't that has deemed them unable to care for themselves and taken the legal responsibility to care for them. Being in an institution means you're at the point where you can't care for and take responsibility for yourself. Asking, "why should we pay?' is akin in this situation to asking, 'why should the parent pay if their kid gets pregnant?" Because their child is their responsibility.
As for chemical castration, I don't believe it's of much value. It doesn't remove any of a sex offenders motivations. They still have a headfull of possible memories of abuse, of past experiences with children and motivations that might have little to do just with sex. It's like taking the knife out of the hand of a violent person I think...you're still leaving that person filled with rage and he'll just find another way to express it.
Reading this almost made me cry.  It made me think of this thread. Obviously, the mother is severely disturbed. She should not be allowed to have any more children. Hopefully she will spend the rest of her life in prison.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/23/severed.arms.ap/index.html
I agree with unschool mom....sterilization in the case of sexual offenders will not change them. There are MANY MANY ways to sexually abuse a child and it doesn't necessarily have to be reproductive organs or sexual feelings giving them the urge to do it.
OMG Kelly, that is so sad.
That is a horrible story that you posted, Kelly. I can hardly believe anyone could do that to their own flesh and blood. God help us all. I am still trying to figure out why she cut the arms off, it just doesn't make any sense to me at all.
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