The knee-jerk reaction in this age of feminism is to give a woman an "out" for her crimes before the ink is dry on the newspaper story. I'm ready to grant the same mercy to men who kill when they are clinically depressed, schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill. But you will never see a post like yours that seeks to mitigate punishment for a male murderer so quickly, so automatically, if at all. John Salvi was also screaming incoherently when he ran into several abortion clinics and gunned down a half dozen people. I didn't hear any of you "mentally ill" apologists chiming in to mitigate his sentence due to his own well documented schizophrenia. I think, in an honest moment, you will agree that this type of mercy is publicly poured out only for women killers. There are men doing over 20 years right now for shaking thier babies in the crib and killing them in an un-premeditated rage. I'm sure they too were screaming incoherently during their murderous tirades....to no avail in the Courts that tried them. And there is no public outpouring of mercy for any of them.
If you're going to crusade to save whacked out mothers who kill, then men deserve all the same time, energy, thought and devotion that you give to these murderous mothers.
Finally, just a thought to ponder. Why does a babbling, incoherent mother have to kill her children in that state? Is incoherence synonomous with murder? There are many things that people do when they go over the edge mentally, such as walking around talking to themselves, compulsively picking up litter on the sidewalk, sitting and staring into nothingness, thinking they are Joan of Arc, etc, etc. Even a mentally ill person has to be filled with unbridled rage to kill her own children. Your reasoning says that the sheer magnitude and horror of this crime must somehow mitigate her culpability, because after all, mothers just don't do these things. Well guess what? Mothers are doing these things all the time. Mental illness is not synonomous with unbridled rage and murder; and if it is, then this woman had a chance long ago to drop her hate and rage before it consumed her mind.
Did they also try and commit suicide? I've read your posts on this subject, and it seems to me that you have an axe to grind.