Infancide essays

Infancide essays One Mans Trash is a Countrys Burden Infanticide is and was always the illegal practice of killing infants. Many times people choose to kill their infants because they were poverty stricken. Some people chose to kill their infants due to the childs shameful conception. No matter what the cause, infanticide was and still is a sickening problem. At one point in time infanticide was a popular method of population control. It was a method and a practice that many participate in and did not look down upon. Often children were not seen as a joyful occasion. These parental viewpoints lead to the destruction of many children, especially female infants. Thanks to Christianity, however, many people started to regard their newborns as blessings instead of burdens. The Christian faith preached that killing, no matter what the cause was wrong and punishable in the afterlife. Although in the latter part of the fourth century this offense was accompanied by the death sentence for anyone practicing infanticide, it could be due to the severe decrease in the population due to famine and other epidemics that struck the nations. In any case, the problem of infanticide was generally dealt with through the church system and not by any governmental branch. A common means of infanticide was through the unintentional smothering of a child while the child and the parents slept in the same bed. This was almost impossible to prove as an intentional means of slaughter. Many women who were accused of committing this particular crime served their time in jails or even were committed to the death sentence. Women (rarely men) could also plead insanity but this excuse was usually overruled and the women were inevitably sentenced to death. Eventually, in the fifteen hundreds fines were set in place to discourage people from sleeping with their infants. Women and men were facing hard times. But the women of these times, especially ...