Last week a 28-year-old Utah woman was charged with murder after she refused a doctor’s advice to have a Caesarean section that could have saved the life of one of her unborn twins.
Instead of having a C-section and allowing both of her babies to be born alive, Melissa Ann Rowland refused the surgery because she did not want the surgical scars on her stomach.
As a result, one of her twins, a boy, was stillborn.
The other twin, a girl, was born alive, but Salt Lake City prosecutors said the baby tested positive for cocaine and alcohol.
Prosecutors contend there is documented evidence that doctors warned Rowland numerous times her twins would likely die if she didn’t have the surgery immediately, and a subsequent autopsy proved that the baby boy would not have died if Rowland had followed the doctor’s orders.
According to police, a delivery room nurse heard Rowland say she would rather “lose one of the babies than be cut like that.”
Prosecutors said Rowland exhibited a depraved indifference to human life by refusing the C-section and have formally charged her with criminal homicide and child endangerment.
Rowland has denied that she refused the surgery because of the scarring, but her attorney has confirmed that his client has a history of child endangerment and mental illness.
Rowland was previously convicted of child endangerment in 2000 after an incident in which she repeatedly punched her daughter in the face after the child began eating a candy bar in a Pittsburgh supermarket.
According to those who witnessed the incident, Rowland screamed at her child: “You ate the candy bar and now I can’t buy my cigarettes.”
Rowland’s older children currently live with their grandparents, and the twin baby girl who survived has since been adopted by a family that knows Rowland.
So, let’s put this into perspective: a baby boy died unnecessarily because the abusive mother was too vain to have a C-section.
This is undoubtedly a horrible turn of events, and I have no doubt that this woman will easily be convicted of murder.
The question here, however, is not one of right and wrong –Melissa Ann Rowland was wrong in her decision to sacrifice the life of her unborn baby for the sake of vanity.
The question involved here is one of differentiation — how is this case any different from a typical instance of abortion?
There will undoubtedly be critics of the charges put against Rowland who will say this case could have a negative impact on abortion rights.
But, is an abortion really that different that Rowland’s brutal actions?
Simply put, an abortion is a woman’s decision to terminate her unborn baby’s life.
That’s all Melissa Ann Rowland did.
She chose to let one of her babies die because she didn’t want to have a scar.
The reasoning behind a woman’s decision makes no difference in the case of an official abortion — be that reason “I’m not ready to raise a child,” “It’s my body…I should be able to do what I want with it” or “I just don’t want this baby.”
These are all socially and legally acceptable reasons why women have abortions, but those rationalizations really are not that different from Melissa Ann Rowland’s reason of vanity.
But, she’s being charged with murder, and rightly so.
Call it abortion or call it a depraved indifference to human life, “terminating” an innocent life because of inconvenience or any other reason, for that matter, is wrong.
Women who have abortions get away with it by evoking their so-called constitutionally-protected right to choose.
Melissa Ann Rowland is being charged with murder simply because she was crazy enough to come up with a bad excuse.