Hammering Heads

Dallin Oaks, former state Supreme Court Justice, once warned a group of new attorneys that until they became grey with worry and oblivious to influence they would tend to wield their Bar memberships like toddlers given a hammer and told to go forth and pound nails. Along with many other professionals, that's what we’re doing to Melissa Ann Rowland, we're pounding nails with the skill and temperance of five year olds.

Every doctor, lawyer, police officer and social worker has seen them. The "Ms. Rowlands" who can't responsibly manage the tangles in their own hair let alone another human being. And we've all said it–this person should not be allowed to have children–but not out loud. It's violent, morally tyrannical and an anathema to even suggest that we should control the reproductive potential (not sexual freedom) of our citizens. So what do we do?

We wring our hands and facilitate in a pre-conception pre-partum stupor. Emasculated by our sense of misguided morality, we brush off, we coddle, we cite, we medicate, we feebly recommend, and then we send off the "Ms. Rowlands" of the world to some other jurisdiction or medical facility hoping that others will bear the burden and incur the expense of early intervention. But it never happens and we end up with dead, discarded, and neglected babies. Only then do we jump into action. When the consequences are irreversible, we whip out our hammers and in full hammering fury file murder and neglect charges, shuttle live but often battered children into foster care, and vilify all who had contact with the putative mother including the society-made dollar-conscious health care providers.

In the end, isn't this a more repugnant, violent act? Isn't it more vile to sit mindlessly before the birth canal waiting to select the appropriate hammer based upon the outcome? We should not. It is likely that Ms. Rowland did not have the mental acuity to understand the implications of her pregnancy nor to understand the implications or necessity of the recommended C-section. She is not a murderer in the classic sense that she ever formed the criminal intent to kill; she is the embodiment of our inability to make hard decisions early instead of later on when death, abuse and neglect raise their menacing heads ever in need of pounding. We need to put away our hammers, take a deep breath and make the difficult decisions, not in the birthing room, but before conception dictates the inevitable.

Loren M. Lambert March 15, 2004