Excuse me for caring about THE CHILD not the mother.
Any idiot in good reproductive health with access to a partner can manage their part of a pregnancy; it doesn’t suddenly make her less culpable for her crimes. That’s not really the point, though. I realize “completely strip her of any rights to the child” could be read as “do this as a means of punishing her,” but I’m concerned about the child’s well-being, not hers. If half of what John Carreyrou wrote is true - and he’s a respected WSJ journalist, I have no reason to disbelieve it - the child will be much better off if her parental rights are terminated.
Due to the nature of my personal circumstances, I have thought long and hard in my life about the ethical issues surrounding parental rights. You’ll have to do better than the snide phrase “it doesn’t reflect well on you” if you want to convince me that a child’s well being should come second to the rights of an adult just because they share genetic material.
I really doubt this is true. Ignoring your language, I sincerely doubt a pregnant addict would have to stand trial on or very near their due date. Trials are continued for all sorts of reasons, and a delay of a couple of months due to the defendant delivering a baby wouldn’t surprise me at all. Although I don’t have a specific memory of this situation when I represented “knocked up crack hos,” I am certain it happened. No Judge (or prosecutor for that matter) wants a 9 month pregnant defendant on trial in their courtroom.
I’m not familiar with the article. What has he said that would suggest she would not care adequately for the child? That’s the issue in child protection matters.
Then write a post about how Holmes would likely be an unfit mother. You wrote a rant about the trial being delayed and casually suggested stripping her of her rights as a mother if the biological father couldn’t take over…
I too think extremely unfit parents should lose parental rights, but that’s not what your OP described. What you wrote was straight forward “strip her of the rights of parenthood if the trial would be delayed otherwise”. I agree that is not precisely “take her child to punish her”, but it’s not much better.
While I’m sure Ms. Holmes’ no doubt very expensive lawyers are engaging in all kinds of strategizing, and delaying her trial may be in her interests, her due date pretty much coincides with the start of her trial. It makes sense from the point of view of all parties (prosecution, court, defense) to delay the start of her trial, since it would have to be adjourned anyway when she started labor. Better to postpone than to interrupt.
Ms. Holmes is married. She married in 2019, and not to Ramesh Balwani. There is no reason whatsoever to think anyone other than her husband is the father of her expected child.
So, the child will have a legal guardian - his/her father. If Ms. Holmes is convicted, and is sentenced to prison, there will be no guardianship or custody issues. Her husband is not part of the criminal case against Holmes, and had nothing to do with Theranos.
And, finally, I don’t believe that a criminal conviction, in and of itself, should be grounds for stripping a parent of parental rights. Of course, there may be other factors that justify termination of rights. But one conviction, for one crime? Maybe if the parent is Gary Ridgeway. But otherwise, I don’t see it.
Okay, a few things. First, I did post my OP in gleefully nasty this-ain’t-GD-I’m-gonna-express-my-immediate-reaction-damn-the-consequences style. So the consequences are that I need to clarify a little.
I don’t actually oppose delaying the trial, given that she’s due right in the middle of it. As a practical matter, a delay needs to happen. Also, though I got a laugh out of the jokes about her faking her pregnancy - they do kinda just write themselves - I would be surprised if she isn’t actually pregnant.
My recreational outrage, and utter disgust relates to the fact that the timing of this pregnancy is unbelievably suspicious, and perfectly in keeping with her “poor poor pitiful innocent me” persona, when in fact she’s no better than Trump in her lying self-aggrandizement, the main differences being that she’s much more intelligent and can manipulate based on her adorable-young-female looks.
@Northern_Piper - it’s more than an article, John Carreyrou wrote a well-known book called “Bad Blood” detailing the entire fraudulent enterprise. She is a very sick woman who showed that, at the least, she is utterly delusional, and at worst she is indifferent to the deaths that could be caused by her fraudulent action.
As I said, I was posting in disgust/outrage, and would not expect the civil authorities to rush off and strip her of her rights without due process. But I sincerely doubt she’s a fit parent and no, I’m not going to lay out the case here beyond stating what everyone knows, which is that she systematically defrauded investors with fake medical technology which, if actually adopted, had substantial potential to lead to the death of many innocent people.
At first I was like “wait, who is Elizabeth Holmes?” But then before opening the thread I reread the “privileged sociopath” part, and remembered. It’s accurate enough.
Pretty obvious they have to delay, but after having watched the documentary I would be unsurprised to learn that she gave some thought to the timing.
The most charitable explanation for the timing of her pregnancy is that it was a genuine accident - she was using birth control, it failed, and she doesn’t believe in abortion. That is within the realm of possibility, but color me skeptical.
If that’s not the explanation, then the pregnancy is deliberate. And seriously, what decent human being chooses to get pregnant while they are about to face legal charges that could lead to years of imprisonment? Does that suggest to anyone that she’s likely to be a fit parent? To me, it’s more of the same selfish behavior that has characterized all of her actions.
I could see someone getting pregnant because that might be difficult to do after conviction.
It’s still not fully rational and it does seem selfish to intentionally conceive a child knowing the trouble that child will face. So I’m absolutely not excusing it. But I can somewhat see the motivation for it.
I hold no brief for Elizabeth Holmes but the historian in me is kind of intrigued to see this modern instance of the venerable ploy of pleading the belly, a provision in English common law that allowed female felons in the later stages of pregnancy to defer their capital punishment until after they’d given birth.
And yes, it was apparently quite a common thing for female prisoners to seek out impregnation so they could present a “belly plea”. I’m not arguing that any or all of them were necessarily “decent human beings”, but I don’t think such behavior is all that abnormal.
Elizabeth Holmes is clearly a pathological narcissist who has little concern for outcomes as long as what she does gets her relief and approbation in the near term. There is little doubt that this pregnancy–assuming it to be true and that the court insists upon proof–was intentional or at best she took no effort to prevent it, and it seems likely she would use it to argue for penal relief. Given the number of very powerful and high profile backers of Theranos, I’m surprised that this has even gotten to trial and it would not surprise me in the least if she is sentenced to house arrest or some other bullshit penalty while former employees go without any compensation (many having been shafted out of many weeks of pay) and whistleblower Tyler Shultz still burdened with over $400k of legal fees from Theranos using legal action to attempt to bully him into silence.
Could this really be a factor? I thought she’d been thoroughly discredited and that virtually all her investors realized they’d been taken for a ride. Does she still have supporters? How depressing. And if your prediction proves correct and she gets only a “bullshit penalty” – well, I try not to be a cynical person in general, but that outcome certainly will not enhance my opinion of society’s power structure.
One of my neighbors has been a foster family to children whose parents were incarcerated. The parents are not stripped of their parental rights, but the children are placed elsewhere. I believe the welfare of the child is considered before the children are returned. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the foster system is over-burdened and children are often returned to poor circumstances.
(My neighbors, just FYI, loved their foster kids dearly and adopted a few of them.)
So many idiotic people here looking beyond the obvious. She absolutely timed her pregnancy to coincide with her trial and to use her infant to either get off or stay out of jail.
Heh, considering why she is going to be on trial (bogus blood testing technology) I’m skeptical that she is pregnant. And if she is, shrug, her husband has the wherewithal to raise a child with all the help money can buy. They can visit mommy as often as she’ll be allowed.
Isn’t that what is mostly being said here? Some don’t believe she’s actually pregnant, but that she’s still saying so for the same reason.
I don’t give friendly advice often, but in this rare exception I’ll recommend you don’t start your time here on the Dope by calling Dopers idiotic. Even if it’s true people tend to resent it for some reason.