Medea

Maternal love, provider of nurturance, protection, and unending devotion, is one of the greatest gifts of nature. It is the very foundation upon which human society stands. That is the reason why a woman who kills her children arouses in us such feelings of anguish, sadness, and pity -- the basic ingredients of tragedy. The legend of Medea, a princess in prehistoric Greece who killed her children after being rejected by her husband so he could marry another woman, has been a source of inspiration to poets, playwrights, and artists. However, to the judicial system, a woman who kills her children is a dilemma, because criminal law retribution and deterrence does not seem to make sense for this type of violent crime. Usually those unfortunate women pass through a maximum-security psychiatric hospital for evaluation of competence to stand trial and for the retrospective examination of mental state at the time of the crime.