Legal Status
Several nations including Canada, Great Britain, Australia and Italy recognize post partum mental illness as a mitigating factor in cases where mothers kill their children. In the United States, such a legal distinction is not currently made. Britain has had the Infanticide Act since 1922.
In 2009, Texas legislator Jessica Farrar proposed a bill that would recognize postpartum psychosis as a defense for mothers who kill their infants. Under the terms of the proposed legislation, if jurors concluded that a mother's "judgment was impaired as a result of the effects of giving birth or the effects of lactation following the birth", they would be allowed to convict her of the crime of infanticide, rather than murder. The maximum penalty for infanticide would be two years in prison.
Read more about this topic: Postpartum Psychosis
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or status:
“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman’s aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)