Okay, there are two stories here. The first is the story of a woman whose vanity was so great that it killed her baby :

A Utah woman was charged with murder after she repeatedly refused a Cesarean because she feared the scars and one of her twins was stillborn, officials said on Friday.

Salt Lake County prosecutors charged Melissa Ann Rowland, 28, on Thursday with criminal homicide after she was warned by doctors late last year and again in early January to get medical attention for the twins she was carrying.

The twins were delivered on Jan. 13 and one of them, a boy, was stillborn.

“The charges, though unusual are justified,” said Kent Morgan, deputy Salt Lake County prosecutor. “She was giving more weight to vanity than to the human life.”

The woman declined the Cesarean section because she said she feared being scarred by the surgery.

“Even though she may not have intended to kill the child, she had a state of mind of utter callousness and indifference for his life,” Morgan said.

The other story is about a scared and confused young woman whose mental illness was so great that she was incapable of following her doctor’s orders :

An obstetrician-gynecologist who saw Rowland at LDS Hospital on Jan. 2 recommended an immediate Caesarean section because of problems with the fetal heart rate and an ultrasound that indicated low amniotic fluid, the statement says. However, Rowland left after signing a statement indicating that she understood that leaving the hospital could result in death or significant brain injury to the babies, according to the statement.
. . .
Edward Leis of the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner, who performed an autopsy on the boy, said the unborn child died two days before his sister was born “and further stated that if the defendant had delivered Baby Boy Rowland when her doctors had urged her to, the baby would have survived,” the probable cause statement says.

Rowland was booked into jail on Jan. 14 — just one day after delivering her twins — on an endangerment charge for allegedly taking drugs that harmed Hannah, the girl. Bail for that count was set at $50,000. For the homicide charge, bail was set at $250,000.

The charges are another sad event in a life marked with mental problems, Sikora said.

He said Rowland, herself a twin, was born to a mentally retarded mother. She was placed in foster care almost immediately and adopted before her first birthday. Her twin brother had serious medical problems and died when he was 7, Sikora said.

Rowland was committed to a Pennsylvania mental hospital when she was 12, weighing almost 200 pounds, and diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder,” Sikora said. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry defines the condition as an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant and hostile behavior toward authority figures that seriously interferes with day-to-day functioning.

Regardless of which explanation you believe (I lean toward the latter), this is clearly a tragedy. While some may argue that she had a right to refuse the surgery, regardless of the reason, I think that line of reasoning is callous and simplistic.

While I’m a ardent defender of the right for women to control their bodies, at a certain point during pregnancy, you’re making decisions for two (or, in this case, three). Just because we support the rights of women to have abortions (and this case, by the way, is not an abortion issue), doesn’t mean that any action that results in the death of a fetus deserves defending. Have conservatives made us so gun-shy on the abortion issue that we’ve become instant defenders of any irresponsibility by pregnant women? What’s next? Defending women who do heroin while pregant?

While I don’t think she’s a murderer, this woman’s actions do not deserve to be defended. Refusing your doctor’s advice when you know it will lead to your child’s death is bad, and if we don’t come out against it, Republicans will turn this into a wedge issue faster than you can say “under god”.The woman herself, on the other hand, looks like she’s in serious need of medical attention. Her motivations were clearly irrational. So, let’s hate the sin and love the sinner (a concept most Republicans aren’t very comfortable with), shall we?