Here we discuss neonaticide and infanticide. Anthropologist Laila Williamson has written, “Infanticide [infant homicide] has been practiced on every continent and by people in every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.” Neonaticide is the act of a parent killing a child during the first 24 hours of life. For our purposes, we will only discuss the act of killing an unwanted baby that has been born alive.
We have mostly dealt with abortion, but the culture of death has other unsettling dimensions. Indeed, sometimes babies born alive during attempted abortion have been smothered, strangled, or put aside to die from lack of care. Shockingly, there is occasional discussion of whether a full term baby might legally be left to die if the mother does not want it, and near full term abortions to kill the baby are not consistently protected by law. However, for the present time, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, signed into law by President George W. Bush extends legal protection in the United States to an infant born alive after a failed attempt at induced abortion. However, neonaticide remains a shocking reality around the world.
A story in the New York Times in 1997 reads “…every year, hundreds of women commit neonaticide: they kill their newborns or let then die. Most neonaticides remain undiscovered.”
An article in Behavioral Science Research in 1982 titled “Infanticide as a Terminal Abortion Procedure” actually concerns itself mostly with neonaticide. The author studied 57 societies to examine “the proposition that infanticide is a terminal abortion procedure, practiced when abortion attempts fail, or when the decision to kill an infant is based on characteristics which can only be observed after birth.” He determined that most deaths were at birth, mostly done by the mother, and that most victims were illegitimate, twins or triplets, weak, or deformed. Furthermore, the victims were viewed as fetuses and not newborns.
It has thus been suggested that restrictive abortion laws are a contributing factor to neonaticide. However, this has been discredited by a study of 39 countries with various degrees of strictness in their abortion laws where no correlation is found.
In the United States, 45% of all child murders occur in the first 24 hours of life. Neonaticide is far more likely to be committed by the mother than by the father. 90% of neonaticidal mothers are under 25 years of age, less than 20% are married, and less than 30% are determined to be psychotic or depressed. A common characteristic of neonaticidal women is concealment of the pregnancy. 95% deliver at home and only 15% receive any prenatal care. Virtually all of them go on to hide the body of their victim. Some have been found in freezers, and some have been found in trash dumpsters. Therefore, it is not known how many bodies have never been found.
There appears to be no gender or ethnic bias in the victims, there is no correlation with congenital abnormalities, and the economic circumstance of the mother is not a factor. However, neonaticide is more common among teenage mothers and those with lower levels of education. Most of these women are single and living at home, and it is their first pregnancy. Furthermore, most of these young, unmarried women still living at home appear to have been born out of wedlock (in one study 23 of 24 women). It has been suggested that the stigmata from having an illegitimate pregnancy could be a causative factor. Among married women, the most common reason for neonaticide is extramarital paternity.
In trying to prevent these tragedies, we identify an at risk woman as “a shy, timid, passive, adolescent living with her parents who is concealing her pregnancy…with few biological manifestations of her gravid state, and the absence of any psychiatric symptoms.”
Another authors says the “mothers shared a personality profile marked by immaturity, dependency, weak self esteem, absence of effective support, [in] psychological isolation, and [having] poor communication with partners.” “Pregnancies were experienced in secret, with conflicting feelings of desire [for] and rejection of the infant and an inability to ask for help.”
It is well pointed out that we have little hope of identifying such women until a tragedy has occurred. And, from discovery of cases where two or even three dead babies have been found, it is reasonably suspected that many cases occur in which the babies are disposed of and never found.