Infanticide Act

The Infanticide Act is the name of two Acts introduced into English Law that started treating the killing of an infant child by its mother during the early months of life as a lesser crime than murder.

The Infanticide Act 1922 effectively abolished the death penalty for a woman who deliberately killed her new born child, while the balance of her mind was disturbed as a result of giving birth, by providing a partial defence to murder. The sentence that applies (as in other partial defences to murder) is the same as that for manslaughter. This Act was repealed by section 2(3) of the Infanticide Act 1938.

The Infanticide Act 1938 extended this defence to cases where "at the time of the act or omission the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child."

Before the partial murder defence of diminished responsibility was introduced to English law in the Homicide Act 1957, this provided an important means of selecting a more lenient sentence for a mother found guilty of killing her infant than the mandatory life sentence or death sentence applying to murder at the time.

In recent years, it has become very rare for a mother who kills her infant child to receive a custodial sentence, except in very exceptional circumstances.

In a report the terms of which were agreed on 1 November 2006, the Law Commission recognised the difficulties facing the court when a defendant is in denial and unwilling to submit to psychiatric examination, as she perceives the purpose of such examination as an attempt to prove her guilt. In such cases, the mother is unlikely to have any other defence and is therefore more likely to be convicted of murder.

The Infanticide Act (Northern Ireland) 1939 makes similar arrangements for Northern Ireland.

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