Newspapers and magazines throughout the country were filled, recently, with discussions of the case of Andrea Yates, a mentally ill, 37 year old married woman living in Texas. She confessed to drowning her five children, one by one, in the family bathtub. Andrea Yates was schizophrenic, and had been “diagnosed with postpartum depression and psychosis in 1999, after her fourth child was born.”[1]� The mother asserted a plea of guilty by reason of insanity, was spared the death penalty, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Unfortunately, this type of crime is not new, and this case is not an isolated instance. Moreover, the legal outcomes for these women are not necessarily the same. In an example closer to home, eleven years ago in suburban Westchester County, New York, a Port Chester woman “slit the throats of her four children as they slept in their beds, then tried to kill herself.”[2]� Today, “she is free to work and enjoy other activities.”[3]�
