Turtle Talk

Joanna Woolman and Sarah Deer have published “Protecting Native Mothers and Their Children: A Feminist Lawyering Approach” in the William Mitchell Law Review.

From the introduction:

A mother killing her child is a shocking event. In the United States, our child protection system seeks to prevent this type of horror, along with countless other acts that harm children. Despite having a system designed to protect children from harm, hundreds of children are killed by their mothers each year. Each death represents a failure of our systems and communities, and individuals within both, to protect children. The typical response to filicide tends to focus on the actions of the individual mother rather than the failures of the system. Our current criminal justice system often deals with these cases and mothers harshly, not taking into account the unique, gendered circumstances that lead a mother to this desperate act. Society is quick to place blame on the archetype of a selfish, unfeeling mother who kills a child because she feels inconvenienced by motherhood. Neonaticide, a subcategory of filicide, is particularly fraught with extremely negative life circumstances, including mental illness, substance abuse, and trauma. These circumstances, in many cases, could be recognized and remedied with the right intervention. We believe that holistic, feminist legal representation could achieve this
intervention in some cases, possibly preventing the extreme, tragic outcome of the death of a child.