A pregnant woman ate rat poison to try to kill herself. She survived but lost the baby. Jill Filipovic sifts through the legal issues raised:
Prosecuting a pregnant woman for attempted suicide is an extreme interpretation of the law, and puts pregnant women in a special class — men and women who aren’t pregnant are never prosecuted for trying to kill themselves … Some states also require doctors to report if a pregnant woman is taking drugs — a law which sounds reasonable on its face, until you think through the logical outcome: Women who are addicted to drugs just won’t seek medical care, which means they won’t get treatment for their addictions and won’t get basic pre-natal care.
Filipovic may be right on the legal question here. But I find the moral logic of that first sentence bizarre. Of course pregnant women are in a different class – their own health and survival implicates another human life. They're in a special class when it comes to smoking and drinking as well. Or think of the HIV-positive mother who, because she doesn't believe that HIV and AIDS are connected, refuses to take anti-retrovirals while pregnant to ensure her child is HIV-negative. She too is in a "special class" for reasons that are empirically obvious.
The danger that potential prosecution may make things even harder for the child and the mother is a real one. And suicidal depression can distort anyone's judgment. But treating the matter as if the unborn child has no moral relevance at all seems to me to be an over-reach against common sense.
The Dish 