This book traces twentieth-century Canadian criminal justice responses to women who kill their newly born babies. Initially, juries were reluctant to convict these women of murder since it carried the death penalty. The current "infanticide" law was adopted in 1948 to impose uniformity on legal practice and to ensure a homicide conviction. Even then, prosecutors faced considerable difficulties, but now, amidst media pressure, and with public attitudes possibly hardening, there are calls for the repeal of the infanticide law and the adoption of a draconian framework to deal with these cases. Kirsten Kramar provides an interdisciplinary feminist approach to the study of infanticide law, examining and linking historical, sociological, and legal scholarship. She examines in detail the legislative history and infanticide case law, as well as the range of relevant medical discourses from the past 100 years. By doing this, she provides a more nuanced approach to the debates around the broader issues of the medicalization of women’s deviance – one that reveals some of the political dangers inherent in hasty critiques of infanticide law, and shows the value of careful interdisciplinary analysis for studies in the history of law and socio-legal relations. Drawing on a wide range of original data sources (provincial and federal indictment case files, coroner’s records, reported legal cases, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, official crime statistics, media reports, and expert medical texts), Kramar presents a detailed picture of the developments, revealing the often ironic consequences of attempts to rationalize this area of law. An established feminist critique of "infanticide" as an inappropriately medical concept is shown to have been largely unhelpful, misconstruing the phenomenon’s history and significance, and lending support to calls for a "get tough" approach Unwilling Mothers, Unwanted Babies makes an important contribution to the international literature on maternal neonaticide as well as the medicalization of deviance, and will be of interest to those working in law, sociology, criminology, women’s studies, and gender history.

First you marry a man who does not want children. He cheats and you divorce him. Then you marry the love of your life and find out he does not want to have children with you either. The three he has are more than enough. Although you always wanted to be a mother, you decide he is worth the sacrifice, expecting to have a long happy life together. But that's not what happens. This is the story of how a woman becomes childless by marriage and how it affects every aspect of her life. This is the book of my heart, the one I had to write. Ever since I realized I was not going to have children, I have felt recurring grief and an emptiness in my heart. I am different from most women, but I have found that I am not alone. There are many of us childless women, and I think it's important to share our stories about what it's like when you don't have children in a world where most girls grow up to become mothers. I hope this book offers comfort to those who are childless and understanding to those who are not. If it makes you smile here and there, even better.

This book provides the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of the Infanticide Act and its impact in England and Wales and around the world. It is 100 years since an Infanticide Act was first passed in England and Wales. The statute, re-enacted in 1938, allows for leniency to be given to women who kill their infants within the first year of life. This legislation is unique and controversial: it creates a specific offence and defence that is available only to women who kill their biological infants. Men and other carers are not able to avail of the special mitigation provided by the Act, nor are women who kill older children. The collection brings together leading experts in the field to offer important insights into the history of the law, how it works today, the impact and legacy of the statute and potential futures of infanticide laws around the world. Contributors consider the Act in practice in England and Wales, the ways it has been portrayed in the British media and justifications for and criticisms of the provision of special treatment for women who kill their infants within a year of birth. It also looks at the criminal justice responses to infanticide in other jurisdictions, such as Australia, Ireland, Sweden and the United States of America.

As the fastest growing prison population worldwide, more and more women are living in cages and most of them are mothers. This alarming trend has huge ramifications for women, children and communities across the globe. Empathy for mothers behind bars and concern for criminalized mothers in the community is in short supply. Mothers are criminalized for their vulnerabilities and for making unpopular but difficult choices under material and ideological conditions not of their own choosing. Criminalized Mothers, Criminalizing Mothering shines a spotlight on mothers who are, by law or social regulation, criminalized and examines their troubles and triumphs. This book offers a critical and compassionate lens on social (in)justice, mass incarceration, and collective miseries women experience (i.e., economic inequality, gendered violence, devalued care work, lone-parenting etc.). This book is also about mothers’ encounters with systems of control, confinement, and criminalization, but also their experiences of care.

"Baby safe haven" laws, which allow a parent to relinquish a newborn baby legally and anonymously at a specified institutional location--such as a hospital or fire station--were established in every state between 1999 and 2009. Promoted during a time of heated public debate over policies on abortion, sex education, teen pregnancy, adoption, welfare, immigrant reproduction, and child abuse, safe haven laws were passed by the majority of states with little contest. These laws were thought to offer a solution to the consequences of unwanted pregnancies: mothers would no longer be burdened with children they could not care for, and newborn babies would no longer be abandoned in dumpsters. Yet while these laws are well meaning, they inadequately address the social injustices that compel abandonment for the very small number of girls and women who abandon their newborns. Advocates of safe haven laws target teenagers, women of color and poor women in particular with safe haven information under the assumption that they cannot offer good homes for their children. Laury Oaks argues that the labeling of certain kinds of women as potential "bad" mothers who should consider anonymously giving up their newborns for adoption into a "loving" home should best be understood as an issue of reproductive justice. Safe haven discourses promote narrow images of who deserves to be a mother and reflect restrictive views on how we should treat women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy.

"Maternal filicide-the killing of a child by the mother-is not a new phenomenon. Evidence of mothers killing their infants dates back to at least 2000 B.C.E. and the ancient Chaldean civilization. The trial of Andrea Yates in 2001 for drowning her five children, however, captured the public attention in a way few similar cases had before. Initially met with public shock and outrage, the Yates case also spotlighted postpartum psychosis and maternal mental health forensics-the intersection of maternal mental illness and the criminal justice system. Coedited by George Parnham, the attorney who successfully defended Yates, this book includes his narrative account of how he first heard about and came to take on the case. It also features real case examples from more than 30 experts in the field representing eight countries. In addition, the book includes a chapter on paternal filicide, an important subject that receives far too little attention in the literature. Firmly rooted in research, thorough in its description of theory, and packed with practical applications, this volume highlights the necessary competency areas for those involved in maternal mental health forensics, whether psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, or lawyers"--

A guide for professionals involved in the counselling of involuntarily childless couples. It attempts to explain the benefits and risks of the options available to infertile couples and includes discussion of the Baby M case and the psychological and legal ramifications of surrogacy.

Abortion remains one of the most complex and controversial issues in contemporary law and bioethics. This volume draws together key essays from leading scholars on the ethical and regulatory aspects of abortion. The essays explore the complex issues of personhood, prenatal life and reproductive rights, international perspectives on the regulation of abortion, health professionals and the provision of abortion services, and prenatal diagnosis and abortion. This volume will be an invaluable tool for all those interested in this challenging area.

Criminalizing women has become all too frequent in these neo-liberal times. Meanwhile, poverty, racism, and misogyny continue to frame criminalized women’s lives. Criminalizing Women introduces readers to the key issues addressed by feminists engaged in criminology research over the past four decades. Chapters explore how narratives that construct women as errant females, prostitutes, street gang associates and symbols of moral corruption mask the connections between women’s restricted choices and the conditions of their lives. The book shows how women have been surveilled, disciplined, managed, corrected, and punished, and it considers the feminist strategies that have been used to address the impact of imprisonment and to draw attention to the systemic abuses against poor and racialized women. In addition to updating material in the introductions and substantive chapters, this second edition includes new contributions that consider the media representations of missing and murdered women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the gendered impact of video surveillance technologies (CCTV), the role of therapeutic interventions in the death of Ashley Smith, the progressive potential of the Inside/Out Prison Exchange Program, and the use of music and video as decolonizing strategies.