There seems to be a subtle point missing in much of the discussion of Andrea Yates’ sanity.

Yes, she called the police because she knew that drowning her children like so many kittens in a sack was illegal. But if she (insanely, in my humble opinion) thought that the alternative was to consign them to hell, then she also thought that what she was doing was not wrong.

My opinion–she’s mad as a hatter (or at least she was on the day that she murdered her kids). She’s probably not a danger to society at this point, but she should get years of confined therapy, and never be allowed to bear any more children.

But the larger point is that all that is immoral is not necessarily illegal, nor should it be. And vice versa. Yes, we all know that killing your own children is wrong, but not simply because there’s a law against it. And not all things that are illegal (such as not reporting the location of Jews in Nazi Germany) are wrong.

And the point of this post is that, just because Andrea Yates reported her crime to the authorities, and was willing to accept the consequences, it does not mean that she properly understood the moral implications of her act.