Another Newborn Killed by his Mother and Another Judicial Tap on the Wrist
When this case appeared on my screen, my first thought was "Oh, I've already done a piece on that," and started to delete it. After all, it looks a lot like the Alicia Zebrun case I wrote about in "Sentencing Discount for Woman Who Left Newborn to Die." The two women even look somewhat alike.
Alas, this is yet another story of a woman who intentionally killed her newborn child. In this case, Angela Kuehl of Ottawa smothered the baby boy she later named Noah in plastic, put him in a trash bag and dumped him in the garbage. The article makes a half-hearted effort to fob off the wrongdoing on Kuehl's common-law husband who didn't want children. Apparently neither did she.
And, like the Zebrun case, it looks like Kuehl will get off with scarcely any punishment. The prosecutor and defense attorney seem to have arrived at a plea deal - "a one-year conditional sentence to be served in the community, along with 200 hours of community service, followed by two years probation." The judge is going to take some time to think it over.
Apparently, court-appointed psychologists have concluded that Kuehl suffered from "a disturbance of mind upon giving birth." That finding is necessary to allow her to plead to infanticide rather than second-degree murder.
I have a few questions. Kuehl, like every other woman in Canada, has access to a wide variety of contraceptive options. Like every other woman, she has access to the morning after pill. Like every other woman, she has the right to terminate the pregnancy via abortion. Although Canada apparently has no Safe Haven law, like every other woman, Kuehl had the right to place the child for a adoption. A healthy newborn like hers would likely have gotten a home in short order. Kuehl availed herself of none of those many possibilities. Instead, she killed a living, and yes, breathing child.
My question is this: does any of that matter to Canadian authorities? All of those alternatives are there so that, among other things, the minutes-old Noahs of the world can live and not be killed.
I'll accept that Kuehl suffered "a disturbance of mind upon giving birth." I don't have any evidence to the contrary. But was she suffering a "disturbance of mind" during all the nine months before Noah was born? If she really was so mentally unbalanced that she couldn't understand that she was pregnant or that she had resources to end the pregnancy before the fetus had become viable, I have no problem with a light sentence.
But there's no suggestion in the article of any of that. And if she did have the faculties to understand the concepts of birth control, pregnancy and abortion, then I must say, I don't understand how she, and more importantly the Canadian judicial system, can be so callous about an infant's life.
Canadian law does not protect this behavior. Unlike in the United States, Canada recognizes no restrictions on abortion, but once a child is born, it has the rights of other human beings.
And Noah had already been born. He was long past the stage at which we accept a mother's taking of his life, and yet the judicial system treats him as if he were not. We search the statements of the judge and prosecutor for any hint of outrage, in vain. They seem to believe that the only one injured here is Kuehl.
Did anyone even once inquire about what steps Kuehl had taken to prevent herself from becoming pregnant or to end it legally once she had? If so the article doesn't report the fact. Do they - the prosecutor, the judge and the press - just not care?
I doubt they're that heartless and unfeeling. What I do believe is that we still place essentially all decisions about children in the hands of their mothers. Even when they commit the most heinous acts against a child, society's response is to make excuses, to absolve her of responsibility.
As long as we do that, women will never attain equality with men. When we hold them to equal standards of morality concerning their treatment of children, they will.
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