Infanticide

You've all been most kind.

And what's the charge? Infanticide.

What'll happen?

He did it? Yeah.

Would you find him guilty?

Suspense.

You've been listening to Infanticide, dramatized for suspense by Alan Sloan, from a story written by Eliezer Lipsky.

Heard in tonight's story were Santos Ortega as Mr. Catman, with Nat Poland, Ralph Bell, Ruth McDevitt, Frank Butler, and Danny Ocko.

So there's a great piece in the conversation this week by a professor of law at Auckland's University of Tech, Chris Gledhill, his name is, and it's absolutely worth reading and amplifying because what he points out is that the separate offence of infanticide changes the way criminal trials operate in this sort of a case, right? So countries like the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia have the offence in our respective criminal codes.

What we need to focus on here and what this piece focuses on is about the history of the offence and why it was created.

So he writes, Infanticide laws started as a way of avoiding a conviction for murder when the death penalty was still an available outcome.

The British Parliament introduced an Infanticide Act in 1922.

And then it was replaced in 1938.

Still in force, it allows the jury, and this is in the UK, it allows the jury to convict a woman of infanticide rather than murder or manslaughter.

The United States has the highest rate of maternal infanticide in the developed world.

Today, we're going to be talking about this issue from a variety of perspectives, including an archetypal perspective.

And we have with us Brooke Laufer, PhD, who has written a really beautiful book on this subject, Uncovering the Act of Maternal Infanticide from a Psychological, Political, and Jungian Perspective.

I would highly, highly recommend this book.

It's very readable and very... very clear and deep and full of compassion.

Jubilees 7, 20 and 21. concerning seven religious requirements were the children of Noah admonished, setting up courts of justice, idolatry, blasphemy, cursing the name of God, fornication, bloodshed, and thievery.

In his article, Infanticide and the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15, David Enstone Brewer points out how, "...the two versions of the list in Jubilees and in later rabbinic texts have so little in common that we cannot know what this list contained in the first century or even if such a list existed." Moving on to more modern times, particularly concerning the positive contribution which the Jewish community has made to Western society.

Various governmental authorities have wanted to recognize the usefulness of what Judaism has deemed to be the Noahide laws.

The United States government has officially considered the seven Noahide laws to be regulations to be followed by its citizens.