yeah, i know, just being facetious. i support innocent til proven guilty but get frustrated when it all devolves into stupid twists of the law. she's guilty. it was proven. pop her. move on.
or how about just having the family pay for themselves? there is an idea, don't turn to the government every time there is a problem.

but Bruce is right, these arguments are for different threads.

That's the problem with some aspects of the criminal process. It's a given that she is guilty of killing her kids. In a situation like this it is a case of determining which specific crime, by the letter of the law, that she has commited.

That's the parent's and the media's fault.

I agree dude--I'm being facetious too :biggrin:

Don't mind me, I just wanted to stick that Peterson thing in. Carry on. :)

yeah, whatever. Bruce, you are totally the thread police. always busting our chops to prevent thread hijacking... :D

Because the possibility of an abortion is irrefutable proof that the person is old enough to have one. And because unlike any of those other operation, an abortion has to be done SOON. Because it should not be a parent's choice about whether her teenaged daughter has a child.

I disagree with many other ages of consent, but even if we must have them, we should not have one for abortion.

They are NOT children. They are adolescents. There's a big difference, that difference being the one which makes abortion an issue at all.

It's not about her. It's about a witness for the prosecution lying. A tainted conviction is a stain on the whole system, whether the person was guilty or not.

HM are there any doubts in anyone's mind that she killed her children? If they were talking about the only piece of evidence that was used to convict being tainted, that is one thing. that isn't the case here. she did it, everyone knows it. quit screwing around with the legal wrangling and be done with it.

If the says they aren't old enough to decide who they want to have sex with without restriction, then they aren't old enough to decide. the physical ability to get pregnant doesn't say anything about decision making ability. By your reasoning that 9 year old that got pregnant last year should have been able to walk into the clinic and have an abortion without her parents knowing about it.
If a parent or guardian has to sign off on every other aspect of a minor's life, there shouldn't be an exception on one surgical procedure.

It's not a question of guilt really, it's a question of whether she was crazy or not. The guy testified that she got the idea to drown her kids and claim insanity from watching a tv show.
Really I don't know what difference it makes in the end, except that she was clearly nuts and her jackass husband left the kids alone with her and should bear some of the responsibilty for their murders.

It's not about her. It's about not letting corrupt prosecutions slide. If someone committed murder on national TV and signed a confession in Wrigley Field with 3000 witnesses, and the prosecution still felt the need to give false evidence in order to bump up the sentence - even though a conviction was guaranteed - then that prosecution deserves to lose, and the person deserves a new trial, with REAL evidence. If you can say "but that's a bad person, they don't deserve a fair trial", then you don't believe in fair trials at all.

I've always thought the husband should be held partially responsible, too. He knew his wife was severely messed up, but left her alone with the kids. He also knew that she had post-partum depression/psychosis after the third or fourth kid was born. Why didn't he use birth control until she got better? Andrea Yates is responsible for her own actions, but there should be some sort of neglect charges put on the husband.

A couple hundred years ago, the kid would have quietly been given some pennyroyal tea or some other herbal abortificent by the local midwife and no one else would have been the wiser. Yay progress.

believe me i do understand that jinx. but consider your own daughter. (just hypothetically - don't throw anything at me) if she was 15 and got pregnant, would you rather that she be able to just walk into a clinic and "take care of it" or would you prefer that she come to you and jim, face the music and you, as a family, can explore your options. she may still end up at the clinic, but at least it is with the support of the family. yes, you and jim would be upset, hurt, and angry, but your number one concern would be for her safety.

in a way you are right HM. i don't believe that fair trials exist. our justice system has very little justice in it. when criminals can get off because of technicalities, i don't see that as being fair to the victims - and i have more concern for them than the criminal.