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On Not Demonizing Mothers Who Kill |
| Published: August 14, 2007, 4:14 pm |
| Tags: reproductive justice, criminal justice |
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Cara at the Curvature has an interesting post up about women who kill their newborn infants or who allow them to die from neglect. Neonaticide, of course, is nothing new. In Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, which is read on the Jewish day of mourning Tisha B'Av, women (there a metaphor for the felled city of Jerusalem)eat their own infants out of starvation (2:20 or 4:10; this isn't my favorite translation). But there, the women are not condemned for their acts; the prophets contextualize them in the context of their starvation in the brutalized city. Then there are more modern and salacious (media friendly) stories of teens flushing newborns or stillborns down toilets at the prom or of women with severe and untreated post-partum psychosis harming or killing their young children (Andrea Yates, most famously, though her act is more often called filicide because her kids were not infants). And of course, the other week, we saw the arrest of a Maryland woman who hid her stillborn son [ Full article ] |
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