Yates & Insanity

I was listening to NPR the other day, and they were discussing the insanity defense being used by Andrea Yates attornies (a defense that appears to have worked). After listening to this, I was left wondering – what is the apparent connection of “doing God’s work” and insanity. Yates, by her own admission, said that she needed to protect her children “from damnation” as she apparently had a vision that indicated that at least two of her children were on a pathway towards sin. In November 2004, a mother who cut off her baby’s arms in God’s name, as she wanted to give her children to God (she was later found not guilty by reason of insanity), and earlier that year, another woman from East Texas was found not guilty (by insanity) by bashing in the heads of two of her children with rocks (again, by carrying out God’s will). The women’s attempted to murder her third child, but according to the mother, he just “wouldn’t die.”