Evidence against elite athlete accused of murdering her baby focuses on previous terminations

The trial of former Australian Olympic water polo player, Keli Lane, accused of killing her daughter shortly after her birth, started yesterday at the Supreme Court. 

The girl, Tegan was born at Auburn Hospital on 12 September 1996. On 14 September Ms Lane attended a wedding with her then boyfriend. The Crown alleges that Tegan was murdered in the hours between Ms Lane's discharge from hospital and the wedding. 

The charge of murder is obviously very serious. But the tone of the debate is equally disturbing. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Crown is presenting her as someone with an "active social life and sex life" who had an overriding ambition to represent Australia in her sport. 

That ambition crowded out everything else, it said, including raising a child. So as part of its argument to prove she must have murdered Tegan, the Crown is presenting as evidence the fact that she terminated her first two pregnancies and then secretly carried two more babies to term in 1995 and 1999 and had them adopted. 

The chief prosecutor said that she did not want ''to be saddled with the responsibility of having a child'' and had sought ''a permanent solution to all these five pregnancies''.

So obviously women who have terminations and arrange for children to be adopted then turn to murder as the only solution left? That seems to be the argument. My question is this – whatever your view about her repeated pregnancies, why would she murder the child when she had successfully arranged two previous adoptions.