Infanticide : Reasonable Charge, Or A Violation Of Human Rights?

In some ethical and legal respects a pregnant woman and her fetus can be considered separate. Both the woman and the fetus are ordinarily affected by the well-being of one another for as long as each of them live. The ethical and legal issues are challenged deeply in cases where the well-being of the fetus and the mother appear to be in conflict. Our society struggles with identifying cases where the pregnant woman’s interests and/or behaviors might put her fetus at risk. Criminal and/or civil commitments should be used to bar pregnant women from exposing their fetuses to risk.

Mary Anne Warren (p.195-196) points out the exceptional circumstances of pregnancy; where one human is entirely biologically reliant on another and where it is impossible for complete personhood rights to not be in conflict between the foetus and the mother. Consider the following case. A mother and an expecting mother both express an intent to kill their child or unborn child respectively. Services are available to take the postnatal children from their mother without affecting her body. Yet to protect the foetus, one would have to imprison the mother until birth, or worse, force a caesarean on her. Warren (193) points out that forced caesareans are not merely a hypothetical

Facts: In March of 1989 a Quebec couple named Jean-Guy Tremblay and Chantal Daigle conceived a baby after a 5 month sexual relationship. After being aware of the pregnancy Tremblay grew jealous, dominant and abusive towards Daigle. Fearing for the well-being of herself and her fetus, Daigle decided to leave Tremblay after he physically assaulted her in early July 1989. Shortly after Daigle, who is now 18 weeks pregnant decided to abort the pregnancy. Her main decision over the abortion was she alone could not raise a child in a peaceful environment with two parents and had no plans of ever seeing Tremblay again in her life.

It has been over 25 years since the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion. In 1988 the court declared that section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which did not allow women access to abortion services without the consent of a physician, infringed on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These rights guarantee the “security of person” which the court determined included access to medical care and procedures that include abortion services (Bourgeois, 23). In principle the amendment of this law has been instrumental for women’s rights and their autonomy in reproductive health decisions, but in practice this might not be the case.

The justice system and society in America also show evident to the separation of the too distinctions by the way of convictions. In the article, evidence is given to show how American society officiates offender and what sentenced are granted to them. In most neonaticide cases, “It is not unusual for those who investigate these cases to elect not to file criminal charges. or for women convicted of neonaticide to receive probation rather than a prison sentence” () this is largely due to the fact that when viewing these cases and looking at the surrounding evidence the mother is view as a victim bipartisan. This does not occur in all cases but in a vast majority, the mothers are being victimized by society

If a pregnancy is unwanted or unplanned, does that mean the life of an unborn child should go to waste? Abortion cannot be the solution, it promotes that human life is disposable. If Canadians are uninformed about the abortion guidelines it can affect their decision to abort the child. In Canada, there is a 24-week deadline for women to have abortions. Many factors impact a woman’s judgement to have an abortion, one of which includes religion. However, physical and emotional factors can also impact the mother when terminating a pregnancy. Canadian guidelines should be changed to further restrict “late-term” abortions; abortions should only be permitted under special circumstances due to the numerous valid ethical implications that go hand in

The rationality of those who support the punishment of addicted mothers focus on the idea that maternal conduct could lead to potential detrimental effects upon the fetus and that prosecution of such behavior would serve as both retribution for the fetus and as a deterrent. Whereas those who advocate for the pregnant women view this rational as not only impermissible but also unconstitutional as in current legal standing the fetus has no rights that usurp those of the pregnant woman (Stone-Manista, 2009, pp.823-856). Advocates also suggests that the breadth of forces that lead to drug use in pregnant women have a prevalent cultural and social foundation that the proponents for deterrence and retribution ignore in favor of strict scrutiny. This conflict between women’s rights and fetal rights has caused a paradigm in the prosecution of pregnant drug users as the interpretation of criminal sanctions argues over the definition of ‘child’ as encompassing fetuses in the definition would then lay the foundation for punishment for a woman’s conduct during pregnancy (Stone-Magnets, 2009, pp.823-856). Though currently it is unconstitutional and legally impermissible to prosecute women with state child abuse statutes in regards to drug use during pregnancy; advocates of fetal rights continue to follow

This article highlights an evaluation conducted used information from CDC’s pregnancy Mortality Surveillance process. Threat reasons for being pregnant-associated homicide have been examined. (being pregnant-associated homicide was once outlined as a loss of life for the period of or inside one 12 months of being pregnant). Homicide was found to be a main intent of pregnancy-associated injury deaths amongst females from 1991–1999. The being pregnant-associated murder ratio used to be 1.7 per one hundred,000 live births. Chance causes included age more youthful than two decades, Black race, and late or no prenatal care

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.

This essay explores postpartum depression and crime. Form intensive research, readers should be able to educate themselves on the actual disorder itself, and how it is linked to crime. In fact, more than half of the cases that involve infant fatality in the United States, have resulted from unawareness of mental illness’s such as PPD. Discussed in the essay, is the Andrea Yates cases, which involve a Houston, Texas mother, suffering from postpartum psychosis. However, the outcome of Yates cases, resulted in numerous studies involving women with PPD. However, the main focus of the essay is to express the importance of the disorder, and how crime can be prevented if pregnant mother seek treatment. As specified throughout the essay, PPD is a serious mental disorder.

In 2001, Andrea Yates, a Texas mother, was accused of drowning her five children, (aged seven, five, three, two, and six months) in her bathtub. The idea of a mother drowning all of her children puzzled the nation. Her attorney argued that it was Andrea Yates' untreated postpartum depression, which evolved into postpartum psychosis that caused her horrific actions (1) . He also argued that Andrea Yates suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her fourth child, and that she attempted suicide twice for this very disorder ((1)). What is postpartum depression, and how can it cause a mother to harm her very own children, altering her behavior towards her children in a negative way? One in ten women

Statement of Problem: Abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. Today, especially here in the United States of America, there is a growing issue and debate around the idea of abortion. There is a stigma against abortion because of the possibility of negative religious, political, medical, emotional, and mental consequences it may cause. Each year, worldwide there is an estimated 42 billion abortions that take place. This number does not include abortions that are not performed by professionals. The big issue alongside with abortion itself, is the affects it has on the mental health of females who undergo the procedure.

Since the legalization of abortion, more than 126,000 abortions have been performed every day and more than 46,000,000 each year (AbortionTV). One may say they can’t understand how a mother can just kill her child because of her irresponsibility. She may rebuttal back with the answer that the fetus is not yet human and it wouldn’t feel any pain anyway. Studies show that the

In a study conducted by Chandra, Venkatsubramanium and Thomas (2002), a sample of 50 Indian women who had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for severe mental illness occurring in the postpartum period was taken to explore infanticide behaviour and ideation. It was observed that the percentage of women who reported infanticidal ideas was 43%, those reporting infanticidal behaviour was 36%, and 34% for both. It was also seen that correlation between infanticidal ideas and behaviour was high (r =.80). It was also observed that infanticidal ideas were more often linked to matrrnal depression, adverse maternal reaction to parting from the newborn and psychotic ideas towards the newborn on the other hand, infanticidal behaviour was found

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.