Kirsten Kramar, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, said the charges against Jeanene Rosa Moar fit into an enigmatic pattern in the way Canadian prosecutors approach the rare infanticide crime. Moar has been charged with manslaughter after police said the body of her newborn daughter was found in a rubbish bin in Winnipeg last month. He was also accused of hiding a child’s body. Kramar said her frustration stemmed from the fact that in Canada, there is another category that is specifically designed to deal with such situations: infanticide. The Penal Code defines the offense as a voluntary act or omission of a mother that causes the death of her newborn, if at this time “she has not fully recovered from the consequences of childbirth; or from the consequences of breastfeeding.” While a conviction for negligent homicide can lead to life in prison, the maximum sentence for infanticide is five years, Kramar said. Kirsten Kramar is a professor at the University of Calgary and a specialist in infanticide. Canada’s infanticide law aims to draw attention to the social conditions around women who are “with unwanted babies and without choices,” she says. (Submitted by Kirsten Kramar) “We need to think of solutions other than persecution and imprisonment, especially for women like her,” said Kramar, who wrote the book Unwilling Mothers, Unwanted Babies: Infanticide in Canada. “They think that if they use the harshest punishment, they will somehow prevent other women from committing such crimes.” But this shows a lack of understanding of the conditions leading up to extremely rare crime of infanticide, he said.
Radical causes
Mothers convicted of killing their newborns often had little or no support during their pregnancies, said Katreena Scott, academic director of the Center for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University. Such cases also often involve domestic violence or mental illness, Scott said. Katreena Scott is a clinical psychologist and academic director at the Center for Research and Education on Violence against Women and Children at Western University in London, Ont. She says mothers convicted of killing their newborns often had little or no support during their pregnancies. (Submitted by Katreena Scott) Moar, whose arrest was announced on Wednesday, has struggled addictions, homelessness and fetal alcohol spectrum disorderwas told in court during the trial of the 2018 sentence for the 31-year-old now. The court also heard that she had a “pretty good” though temporary upbringing, until her mother’s friend kicked her out of their home when she was 18 years old. The same friend also harassed her “emotionally and / or sexually”, according to the court. The solutions that can address the root causes of infanticide depend on the circumstances in each case, Kramar said. They can include things like ensuring that women have the right support throughout their pregnancy and access to birth control and abortion. Canada’s infanticide law also aims to draw attention to the social conditions around women who are “with unwanted babies and without choices,” Kramar said. “It’s not like we just reject the fact that there was a baby who was killed. But we also turn our minds to the various different issues that are [at] “Play when it comes to mothers who are having unwanted pregnancies,” she said. “If we use this harsh framework of punishment, then we can tell ourselves that we are doing something, when in fact, you are doing nothing but impose a measure of punishment on a woman who is already obviously living in difficult circumstances.”
Previous in Canada
Kramar said prosecutors’ tendency to make more serious allegations against women who kill their babies includes the case of Meredith Borovic. Calgary’s wife was charged with second-degree murder after telling police she left three of her newborns in bins. Borowiec, on the other hand, was convicted of two counts of infanticide – a conviction upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2016, characterizing the first time he examined the infanticide law. That’s part of why Kramar said it’s surprising that Moar is accused of negligent homicide instead of infant homicide. “It is not in the public interest. If the case goes to trial … valuable public resources will be used,” he said. “And in the end, the result would probably be the same if they had been accused of infanticide or were able to negotiate an objection agreement.” In Borowiec’s case, Crown’s attorneys argued that the wording of Canada’s infanticide law was vague, outdated, and left much room for new mothers to kill their babies, regardless of moral guilt. However, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to uphold Borowiec’s convictions for infanticide and uphold the law was a precedent, said D. Scharie Tavcer, an associate professor in the criminal justice program at Mount Royal University. D. Scharie Tavcer is an associate professor in the criminal justice curriculum at Mount Royal University in Calgary. The conviction for manslaughter depends on whether the prosecutors prove “some kind of criminal intent,” he says, “against infanticide, where the mother is not well.” (Submitted by D. Scharie Tavcer) Tautcher said securing a conviction for manslaughter instead of infanticide still requires prosecutors to prove both the criminal intent and the action required for the charge. “I do not know what the investigators know,” Moar’s case said. But a conviction for negligent homicide would require proof of “some kind of criminal intent, criminal mind – the mens rea – in the fever of passion, a sudden provocation, against infanticide, where mom is not well.” Winnipeg police said this week that the decision to charge Moar with homicide was made in consultation with Crown prosecutors. Asked about the charges on Friday, a Manitoba prosecutor’s spokesman said in an email that he was examining “the facts and circumstances of each case and determining[s] which charges accurately reflect what has happened. “ Kramar says cases like the one in Winnipeg show how much progress still needs to be made in tackling the types of situations that lead to infanticide. “These cases are a bit like the canary in the coal mine,” he said. “When the weakest and most vulnerable members of society end up committing such crimes, it says much more about society than about individuals themselves.”
