The whole concept that you can kill the baby before it’s born, or while it’s being born, but not a moment after, is very strange in the first place.

Also, accidentally killing a baby with meth in your breast milk does not seem like murder. It’s certainly not purposeful, in the way abortion is the purposeful killing of a baby.

I wouldn’t defend this woman. It’s clear she should be punished. Murder is clearly overkill. Some term such as “criminally negligent manslaughter” or “reckless involuntary manslaughter” would seem a lot more appropriate.

However, here’s the thing: our society is filled with drugs and drug users, and the government does nothing about it. In fact, they actively encourage it.

Obviously, this governmental policy of refusing to address the root causes of drug abuse is going to lead to untold tragedy.

Sure, there would still be people using drugs, and there would still be tragedy, if the government was actively working to stop the problem, but it would be a fraction of what we see now.

So crucifying this woman for being a part of a cultural norm that the government itself has fostered seems somewhat unfair. All prosecutions of drug users for drug related offenses seem unfair. The government has no standing in dealing with these matters, because they haven’t attempted to solve the root problem, and have instead encouraged it through legalization, decriminalization, refusal to enforce the border, refusal to do large scale investigations of drug trafficking rings with any consistency – and so on.

Furthermore, the government has created the conditions by incentivizing the collapse of the family unit, and by driving people into poverty using a barrage of techniques.

Until there is accountability for the people in the government who created this problem, making examples out of users – who are themselves ultimately the victims of a society designed to destroy them seems fundamentally unfair.