Why were the women not punished for murder?

There is a story in the Bible about a time when there was a famine in Samaria, a famine was so severe that women were killing their children to eat as food.

One such incident got to the King, Ben-Hadad, as he was passing on the wall, a woman cried to him “Help me, my King”.

In the book of 2nd Kings Chapter 6 versus 27, the woman said: “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

At this, the King tore his robe and put on mourning clothes. To him, he had failed his countrymen, even though the famine was not directly his doing, he seemed to have taken responsibility for the action of the women.

He took his action further and threatened the prophet, Elisha, which resulted in the prophet, Elisha, prophesizing that: “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah[a] of the finest flour will sell for a shekel[b] and two seahs[c] of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” (2nd Kings Chapter 7 versus 1).

The issue of the famine in Samaria got resolved the next day, indeed a seah of flour sold for a shekel, women no longer had to kill and eat their own children – an abomination to this day.

The question that runs through my mind as I meditated on this Bible story was: “Why were the women not punished for murder? They killed their children and ought to have been punished. The Bible did not say that the king got angry with the women for killing and eating their children.

In this Bible story, the king rather felt defeated, his economy had failed to the point where human beings were killing and eating their fellow human beings and the women couldn’t be punished for that.

This scenario reminds me of our Ghanaian laws that criminalize suicide - persons who attempt suicide and fail, are punished as criminals.

As a psychologist Assistant, I will never support the criminalizing of attempted suicide. Yes, it is not good to take life, let alone take your own life but come to think of it and who in their right senses will really want to kill themselves.

In our right senses as human beings, we are usually afraid to die. When we sit in a vehicle and we sense an accident occurring, we panic because as human beings we are afraid to die. Death is a painful experience so for a person to decide to take his or her own life, straight away we know that all is not right up there.

I think that is the reason some advocates would want the law that criminalizes suicide scrapped. They believe that a person who commits suicide needs help rather than punishment.

It is against this background that this writer will not support any laws in Ghana that seek to penalize parents of children with disability who neglect or maltreat their children.

I do not think that any parent in their right senses will desire to have a child with a disability in a country like Ghana where there is almost no support for such a child.

Elsewhere, governments have developed support systems and facilities that take into consideration the needs of children with disabilities and their families.

I have encountered many parents or families that are forced against their will to leave or lock their children with disabilities up in a room to enable them to go and earn a living.

Key word here is, it is usually against their will, they have no one to leave the child for, and they are usually at their wit's end and do not know what to do, in such situations. Their best bets are to leave these vulnerable children all by themselves to enable go and hassle.

It is either they do this or they watch helplessly to let the whole family perish of hunger. I know a mother of a child with cerebral palsy who gave up her two regular children with no disabilities to the Department of Social Welfare while she stayed with her child with a disability to cater for him and even that she sometimes had to leave this child to go out there and sell.

She also depended on men for money sometimes which usually resulted in her getting pregnant and the cycle of struggle continues.

This parent I am citing, cannot be called a criminal, she may be living recklessly but there is an underlying cause which if dealt with, will bring some peace and harmony into her life.

In formulating policies, the need to touch base with the people whom the policy will directly affect is very important and even key to how well the policy will work.

In any case, if a parent locks up a child with a disability and goes to work, who will know, unless someone notices it one day and reports, if not too late.

We cannot as a country afford to generalize or use a few cases to provide solutions for the masses. A parent of a seven-year-old child with cerebral palsy summed it beautifully when she shared her experience with the Special Mothers Project, an advocacy and awareness creation programme on cerebral palsy issue.

She said “There is diversity in disability too, our children with disabilities have different needs, my son is 7 years now, and we spent the first 5 years of his life in and out of the hospital. Even I, who had some form of support, at a point got so depressed and thought of “finishing him and afterwards kill myself”.

Any penal action for parents of a child with a disability will make a lot of parents go underground and eliminate them, she emphasized.