University of British Columbia Press Unwilling Mothers, Unwanted Babies: Infanticide in Canada (Law and Society)

Product Description 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. Review Kramar’s treatise would be an excellent text for graduate level socio-legal studies. By weaving together historical, anthropological, and socio-legal narratives of early 19th and 20th century infanticide laws, Johnson Kramar persuasively argues against the feminist critique of medical disciplines, and shows how medical experts focused on the harsh socio-economic conditions of poverty and social exclusion that many young unwed mothers faced, as a cause of infanticide. -- Gillian Balfour, Trent University ― Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice Unwilling Mothers, Unwanted Babies reviews the history of maternal neonaticide, from the passing of the English Infanticide Act, 1922, in England, through its adoption in Canada in 1948, to the current child abuse homicide proposals. Original data sources, including federal and provincial indictment case files, coroners’ reports, reported legal cases, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, official crime statistics, newspaper accounts and expert medical texts allow for a unique examination into the depths of maternal neonaticide. -- Tara Tiefenbach ― Saskatchewan Law Review, 2006, vol. 69 About the Author Kirsten Johnson Kramar teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg.