How is this possible?

A local woman has been arrested after she was accused of killing her unborn child by cutting the umbilical cord, authorities said Monday. Jennifer Darlene Johnson, 30, of 1796 Lauderdale 7, Florence, has been charged with manslaughter, authorities said.

Florence police detective Capt. Ron Tyler said Johnson was seven months into her pregnancy when she was taken to Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield on Friday night, where her baby was delivered. Tyler said the baby was dead at birth. … He said medical personnel at Keller Hospital, during the course of the baby's delivery, discovered the umbilical cord had been "severed while still inside the mother's uterus." (Link.)

Leaving aside all the issues around the use of the term "unborn child" and charging someone with manslaughter for killing a fetus, does anyone else wonder how it's even possible for a woman to cut an umbilical cord while it's still in her uterus?

The article notes that she was driven to the hospital by her boyfriend after he "recogniz[ed] something was wrong with her." What it does not note is that her boyfriend is not the baby's father.

Given that it seems wildly impossible for a woman to sever an umbilical cord in her own womb, and that her boyfriend has what is usually called "motive," and that the cord was evidently severed at his house, it seems a rather alarming oversight not to even mention in passing the possibility she may not have acted alone.

But that sort of undermines the monstrous she-devil quality of the story, now, doesn't it? Providing all the facts risks merely painting the picture that she's a deeply fucked-up human being with a possible deeply fucked-up human being accomplice, instead of a virtual alien being.

Treating women as if they can't do heinous shit is the flipside of the same coin as treating women as if they can't do anything of value.

The result is regarding extremely bad or extremely accomplished women as so exceptional as to be inhuman.

[H/T to Shaker KathleenB, who hat tips Jezebel.]