The woman claims to have been on no medication so I’m going to go ahead an make an assumption here that drugs and/or alcohol were involved. After all how can you sleep through a dog eating your baby unless you are truly out of it? That and the fact that this mother was dog sitting a pit bull whose owner was in jail for a gun charge (meaning he was a felon I’m sure, since North Carolina has fairly libertarian gun laws) make me lean toward drug users doing what drug users do:
 JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) – Authorities say they are charging a North Carolina woman who slept as a pit bull chewed the toes off her 4-month-old baby’s left foot.
The Onslow County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the child’s mother, Robie Lynn Jenkins, and her boyfriend, Tremayne Spillman, will be charged with felony child abuse.
Deputies say the couple were dog-sitting the 1-year-old pit bull for a friend who had been arrested on gun charges.
Officials say Jenkins told investigators she was on medication and didn’t hear the child crying as the two slept in the same room Sunday night. She says she didn’t notice the injury until she changed the baby’s diaper Monday morning.
She was either high/drunk or semi-vegetative. Of course I assume some will tell me that if it is indeed a drug related story legalization would have altered the outcome of this story in some occult way.
Update: I misread, she admitted to being on some sort of medication. The point stands, how would legalizing drugs change this story? Let’s assume the woman was on a legally prescribed medication (which since this is North Carolina is not a sure bet) then isn’t this evidence of the harmful effects of even legal drug use?
“The woman claims to have been on no medication ”
The article clearly says she WAS on medication.
If you have a newborn baby, you don’t want to be taking anything that is going to make you non-responsive to that baby’s needs. Doctors generally take this into account when prescribing medications, and when mine haven’t, I’ve refused the medications offered.
Even those “legal” medications that make you sleep more heavily than usual wouldn’t normally make you sleep through a baby’s screams. Not unless you take too much or it is mixed with alcohol, pot, or some other drug that no one should ever mix prescription or over-the-counter drugs with.