[QUOTE=Broomstick]
I’d think drowning your offspring removes you from the gene pool pretty effectively.
The way I heard it, she didn’t forget to take her pills - her asshole husband threw them out.
It’s stuff like that what makes some of us say he’s as guilty as her.
Andrea Yates showed severe symptoms of mental problems. Suicide attempts. Post-partum psychosis. When she was undergoing treatment and on medication she, apparently, showed significant improvement. Among other things, given her reaction to pregnancy and birth (not to mention the medication she was on having side effects on a fetus) she was told to never produce more children, for the sake of her health. Her husband pulled her out of treatment, metaphorically flushed her medicine down the toilet, and impregnated her. Then left her alone, despite worsening symptoms, with no support or relief in raising the brood of children (Which, if I recall, were about a year apart, except for one, two year gap where she was actually getting some proper care).
This is somewhat like deprieving an epileptic of their anti-seizure medicine, then beating them severely when they have a fit, fall down, and break stuff. The epileptic is the agent that does the breaking, but the person deprieving them of the medication that would prevent or mitigate a seizure bears some of the blame here.
Andrea Yates probably shouldn’t have been producing children, and probably should have had close supervision when raising the children she had, if she was a fit mother at all. However, the asshole she was married to valued producing offspring about the mental and physical health of his wife. If she had never had children she would still have had mental illness, but likely would never have killed anyone. If she had had proper treatment and support, she might have been able to be a good mother to the children she had… provided she didn’t have any more. But like I said, the husband thought baby-producing was the most important thing.
[/QUOTE]
Just wanted to add to this something I learned last night on Primetime:
Doctors had told the Yateses that Andrea should not be left alone with the five kids. Despite this warning, hubby took off for work that morning, and knowing that his mother would not be arriving at their house for another hour. It was during that hour that Andrea drowned the kids.
I cringe whenever I hear Rusty Yates yammer about how “things could have been done differently.” No shit. Of course, it never occurs to him that he could be responsible for any part of this tragedy.
