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Infanticide and its Legal Status

Infanticide Infanticide is child murder in the first year of life. We define maternal filicide as a child murder by the mother.  Neonaticide is the murder of an infant within the first 24 hours of life. Almost all neonaticides are committed by mothers. Neonaticidal mothers are often young, unmarried women with unwanted pregnancies who receive no prenatal care. Infanticide laws often reduce the penalty for mothers who kill their children up to one year of age, based on the principle that a woman who commits infanticide does so because " the balance of her mind is disturbed because of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child" . The infanticide law allows mothers to be charged with manslaughter rather than murder if they are suffering from a mental disturbance. However, women convicted of infanticide sometimes do not have significant mental illness as technically required by the law (so e.g. as per the definition of mental disorder under Pun...