Infanticide: Cross Cultural Analysis of the Causes of Infanticide

68-92). Andaya (2014) uses quotes from participants to explain the Cuban narrative of abortion (pp. 80-82). There seems to be a double narrative that is taking place during discussions surrounding abortion. One narrative designates women who keep unintended pregnancies as “undisciplined” (Pg. 82). Women are shamed for conceiving often, especially if they are of a lower class. On the other hand, there is a counter narrative which shames women who have had multiple abortions (Pg. 68). This shaming is disguised a concern for women’s health and fertility, where Andaya (2014) writes “The state holds that abortion is a public health problem…in 2004, 11 of the 54 maternal mortalities were abortion related (Acosta 2006)” in which Cuba has “linked” abortion to maternal mortality. Furthermore, Andaya (2014) also writes “…in 2009, more than half of the cases of female infertility among young women were thought

Historical background was provided in great detail on infanticide in the opening section, this set a precedent that these topics were researched in great length. Throughout the chapter, Davis provided historical support on the other topics presented in this chapter through court cases and research studies. Davis’ support was most beneficial when presented in the form of court cases that have shaped the laws present today and even those that are not commonly known.

Factor related to neonaticide include, “relatively young and overwhelming majority of these women are unmarried” these play important factor towards the psychology that is going on with these women. “in addition to being isolated from their sexual partners these women also where isolated form family and friends.”() The act of being pregnant and isolated from support on a young women tends to lead to denial and other issues influencing her desperate acts. As mentioned in the article abortion was not an accepted practice in American, that is social influences impact lead to more of neonaticide deaths than

The purpose of this paper is to explore maternal child homicide. The paper will discuss biological, environmental and social risk factors of child homicide. Mental health disorders associated with child homicide will also be discussed, as well as the case of Andrea Yates; an example of this crime. There will also be discussion of treatment modalities that would be beneficial for use with this population.

Untreated perinatal mental illnesses have also been linked with an increased risk of suicide. According to Mendez-Bustos et. al suicide has been shown to be one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the last two decades and in the perinatal period the rate is not showing any signs of improvement. In 2005 among women aged 15 to 44 years suicide was the fourth cause of death in the US (Mendez-Bustos, Lopez-Castroman, Baca-García, & Ceverino, 2013). A 2006-2008 review of maternal death in the UK identified psychiatric disorders and suicide in particular as the leading cause of maternal death. In those same years there were 1.27 maternal deaths per 100,000 maternal deliveries in the UK as a result of mental health problems (CMACE, 2011).

As advances are made in neonatology, healthcare providers and families are faced with difficult decisions about premature neonatal resuscitation. Premature infants are now surviving at lower gestational ages than they have ever before causing an ethical dilemma for physicians, nurse, and parents. Physicians and nurses are upheld by the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, while parents may be influenced by spiritual, cultural, moral, and social factors. When making decisions on resuscitation in neonates on the limits of viability, it is important to consider the ethics of the infant’s mortality, mobility including the parental wishes.

In the case of public abandonment, the women are often not mature enough to thoughtfully weigh their options or the consequences of their actions. Reasons for killing and/or discarding infants include extramarital paternity, rape, illegitimacy and perceiving the child as an obstacle to personal achievement.” (Brief Summary, 2000)

A parent who has killed his or her child could be considered not mentally ill due to overwhelming bodies of research and evidence that separate parents who commit infanticide and filicide versus those who commit neonaticide. This controversy is extremely relevant to American society given that starting in the late 1970s, 61% of children under the age of five years old were killed by their parents, with a breakdown of 30% that were killed by their mothers and 31% that were killed by their fathers. This statistic placed homicide as the third leading cause of death of children in the United States, positioning America at the top of the list of child homicide rates out of all other developed nations. Another layer of this controversy is that little is known about the factors that could aid in predicting filicide and neonaticide, showing that there are gaps in the awareness of connections between these crimes and histories of mental health (Friedman, Horwitz, and Resnick). For one to come to the conclusion that if a parent who kills their children is considered mentally ill or not, one has to consider the factors and motives that contribute as to why parents commit filicide versus parents who commit neonaticide.

Historically, most abortions were performed with the assistance of friends, family members, midwives, and or doctors. Self-induced abortions, which had a very low success rate, were attempted through various methods that ranged from applying herbs and ointments to the skin, forceful internal and or external massages, and insertion of foreign objects, to even stomach binding. If all the methods failed, women sometimes resorted to infanticide. Infanticide is the crime of killing a child within a year of its’

The evolution of infanticide has been researched by many scientists. It has been found that infanticide evolved as a mating strategy fore males. (Boyko & Marshal, 2009). Boyko and Marshall (2009), explain that males will use infanticide when taking over a new group or for bonding with a new female. It is an adaptive strategy that males use to reduce the time they have to wait fore females to be able to have his offspring (Boyko & Marshall, 2009). Broom, Borris & Koenig (2004) explain a similar hypothesis in their research. They outline that infanticide has a reproductive advantage for the males, and it will only occur when 1) the infant is not their own, 2) the loss of an infant enables the female to conceive sooner and 3) the male has a high chance of being kept for breeding (Borris, et al.,2004)

In the Merriam Webster dictionary, infanticide is a term described as the act of killing an infant. Other sources describe it as the act of killing one’s own child, or killing of a child less than 12 months old. Female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring. More often than not, it is the mother who does the killing.

Rape is one of the most prominent possibilities as to why a woman would choose to terminate her pregnancy. Though it is a tough decision to make, it is possible to be faced with keeping the child or ending the life of the fetus. In some cases, women make the choice to end their pregnancy knowing how they might treat their child. The women is most likely to hate her rapist and may worry if they move forward with the pregnancy, they would project this hate onto the child because it reminds them of such a painful memory.According to Rachel Perry, “One percent of women in a cross-sectional study of women's reasons for choosing abortion reported that their pregnancy had resulted from rape” (67-73). In addition to the pregnancy, the health consequences of rape can include physical injury, sexually transmitted disease, and mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse.

It is regrettable that female infanticide and foeticide are rapidly decreasing the female population throughout India. The main factors that is responsible for the increase in the incidence of female infanticide and foeticide is the low status of women, son preference, and the practice of dowry across all casts groups.

For hundreds of years, governments have recommended various punishments for causing the loss of a pregnancy, and typically these punishments have been considerably less severe than those prescribed for causing the death of those “born alive.” For instance, as early as the eighteenth or nineteenth century, the Code of Hammurabi provided that “[i]f a man strike[s] a free-born woman so that she lose[s] her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss” (Murphy, 2014). While the governments recognized the loss of a pregnancy as a legally cognizable injury, they generally did not punish feticide the same as they punished homicide was usually punishable by death. Consistent with this tradition, the common law of England generally did not consider the destruction of a fetus to be homicide (Murphy, 2014). In other words, although the common law sometimes criminally punished those that caused the death of fetuses, the common law did not equate feticide with murder unless the fetus

Eskimos are a nomadic people that occasionally kill their young, especially girls, for the preservation of their way of life. They do not have room to carry a lot of kids and if there are no families that are willing to adopt the "surplus" children, Eskimos leave the infants out in the snow to die (EMP, 15). This is justified from their perspective because the men have a higher rate of dying as the ones who go out to hunt and if they let all the female infants live, the population of women would be significantly greater than that of the men (EMP, 22). This would in turn lead to starvation without having men to provide food for them. I am going to argue that the female infanticide is not a morally justifiable practice. I do not agree that killing these innocents outweighs the benefits it has to their society.