About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
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.
Contributor Notes
Kirsten Johnson Kramar teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg.
Editorial Reviews
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.
— 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.
— Saskatchewan Law Review, 2006, vol. 69
