Murder Medicine And Motherhood

Author : Emma Cunliffe
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2011-05-27
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781847316608

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Murder, Medicine and Motherhood by Emma Cunliffe Pdf

Since the early 1990s, unexplained infant death has been reformulated as a criminal justice problem within many western societies. This shift has produced wrongful convictions in more than one jurisdiction. This book uses a detailed case study of the murder trial and appeals of Kathleen Folbigg to examine the pragmatics of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It explores how legal process, medical knowledge and expectations of motherhood work together when a mother is charged with killing infants who have died in mysterious circumstances. The author argues that Folbigg, who remains in prison, was wrongly convicted. The book also employs Folbigg's trial and appeals to consider what lessons courts have learned from prior wrongful convictions, such as those of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. The author's research demonstrates that the Folbigg court was misled about the state of medical knowledge regarding infant death, and that the case proceeded on the incorrect assumption that behavioural and scientific evidence provided independent proofs of guilt. Individual chapters critically assess the relationships between medical research and expert testimony; the operation of unexamined cultural assumptions about good mothering; and the manner in which contested cases are reported by the press as overwhelming.

Author : Emma Cunliffe
Publisher : Hart Publishing
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-13
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781509974146

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Murder, Medicine and Motherhood by Emma Cunliffe Pdf

The 2nd edition of Murder, Medicine and Motherhood presents a fresh examination of the case of Kathleen Folbigg and a critical evaluation of the process that led to her exoneration in 2023. In 2011, the 2nd edition of this influential work argued that Kathleen Folbigg was wrongly convicted of killing her 4 children. The book attracted scholarly and public attention and led to medical and legal reviews of the Folbigg children's deaths. Two subsequent inquiries examined Folbigg's convictions. In 2019, Commissioner Blanch concluded that Folbigg's guilt was “even more certain” than it had been at trial. His report provoked an unprecedented response from the Australian Academy of Science, highlighting a rift between the legal and scientific establishments over how medical evidence should be managed. A petition signed by Nobel prize winners and others demanded a further review. The 2nd inquiry, completed in 2023, adopted a markedly different approach to scientific and behavioural evidence. Commissioner Bathurst ultimately reached the “firm view” that “reasonable doubt exists as to Folbigg's guilt.” This new edition extends the examination of the legal process, medical evidence, and normative expectations of motherhood. It evaluates law's fact-finding processes and the legal system's adherence to the principles of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and raises concerns about how legal actors work with scientific uncertainty and assess women's credibility and demeanour.

Author : Linda C. Fentiman
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 435 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2019-05-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781479867189

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Blaming Mothers by Linda C. Fentiman Pdf

A gripping explanation of the biases that lead to the blaming of pregnant women and mothers. Are mothers truly a danger to their children’s health? In 2004, a mentally disabled young woman in Utah was charged by prosecutors with murder after she declined to have a Caesarian section and subsequently delivered a stillborn child. In 2010, a pregnant woman who attempted suicide when the baby’s father abandoned her was charged with murder and attempted feticide after the daughter she delivered prematurely died. These are just two of the many cases that portray mothers as the major source of health risk for their children. The American legal system is deeply shaped by unconscious risk perception that distorts core legal principles to punish mothers who “fail to protect” their children. In Blaming Mothers, Professor Fentiman explores how mothers became legal targets. She explains the psychological processes we use to confront tragic events and the unconscious race, class, and gender biases that affect our perceptions and influence the decisions of prosecutors, judges, and jurors. Fentiman examines legal actions taken against pregnant women in the name of “fetal protection” including court ordered C-sections and maintaining brain-dead pregnant women on life support to gestate a fetus, as well as charges brought against mothers who fail to protect their children from an abusive male partner. She considers the claims of physicians and policymakers that refusing to breastfeed is risky to children’s health. And she explores the legal treatment of lead-poisoned children, in which landlords and lead paint manufacturers are not held responsible for exposing children to high levels of lead, while mothers are blamed for their children’s injuries. Blaming Mothers is a powerful call to reexamine who - and what - we consider risky to children’s health. Fentiman offers an important framework for evaluating childhood risk that, rather than scapegoating mothers, provides concrete solutions that promote the health of all of America’s children. Read a piece by Linda Fentiman on shaming and blaming mothers under the law on The Gender Policy Report.

Author : Jacqueline Rose
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2018-05-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780374715830

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Mothers by Jacqueline Rose Pdf

A simple argument guides this book: motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. By making mothers the objects of both licensed idealization and cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world’s iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart. Mothers are the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes their task (unrealizable, of course) to repair. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda to insights on motherhood in the ancient world and the contemporary stigmatization of single mothers, Jacqueline Rose delivers a groundbreaking report into something so prevalent we hardly notice. Mothers is an incisive, rousing call to action from one of our most important contemporary thinkers.

Author : Susan B. Boyd,Dorothy E. Chunn,Fiona Kelly,Wanda Wiegers
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2015-05-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9781442619104

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Autonomous Motherhood? by Susan B. Boyd,Dorothy E. Chunn,Fiona Kelly,Wanda Wiegers Pdf

Since the end of the Second World War, increasing numbers of women have decided to become mothers without intending the biological father or a partner to participate in parenting. Many conceive via donor insemination or adopt; others become pregnant after a brief sexual relationship and decide to parent alone. Using a feminist socio-legal framework, Autonomous Motherhood? probes fundamental assumptions within the law about the nature of family and parenting. Drawing on a range of empirical evidence, including legislative history, case studies, and interviews with single mothers, the authors conclude that while women may now have the economic and social freedom to parent alone, they must still negotiate a socio-legal framework that suggests their choice goes against the interests of society, fatherhood, and children.

Author : Harry Willekens,Kirsten Scheiwe,Theresa Richarz,Eva Schumann
Publisher : Göttingen University Press
Page : 182 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
ISBN : 9783863954253

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Motherhood and the Law by Harry Willekens,Kirsten Scheiwe,Theresa Richarz,Eva Schumann Pdf

Who is a child’s legal mother? Must a child have exactly one mother, can it have two or three, or can it have two fathers, but no mother? Or has the concept of motherhood become obsolete and should we just talk of parenthood in a gender neutral way? Questions such as these would have appeared esoteric only a few decades ago, but as a result of new social developments (such as frequent family reconstitutions, gay and lesbian emancipation or surrogacy) and of technological innovations (such as egg and embryo donations) they have become issues in a vehement debate. The interdisciplinary contributions to this book focus on the legal definition of motherhood, on the way in which legal conceptions structure the social discourse on motherhood (and vice versa), and on the influence of legal rules on power relations between mothers, fathers, children and the state. Among the issues addressed are - the challenges to our understanding of the legal regulation of motherhood by developments in reproductive medicine; - the challenges to our understanding of the legal regulation of motherhood by parental constellations deviating from the mother-father-model (single motherhood by choice, same-gender parenthood, multiple parenthood); - the exercise of parental rights in case of parental separation and the impact of legal rules on the bargaining positions of mothers and fathers.

Author : A. Kilday
Publisher : Springer
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2013-06-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9781137349125

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A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present by A. Kilday Pdf

The killing of new-born children is an intensely emotional and emotive subject. The hidden nature of this crime has made it an area incredibly difficult subject area for historians to approach up until now. This work provides the first detailed history of infanticide in mainland Britain from 1600 to the modern era.

Author : Erin Harrington
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2017-08-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781134779338

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Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film by Erin Harrington Pdf

Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror is a space of entertainment and excitement, of terror and dread, and one that relishes the complexities that arise when boundaries – of taste, of bodies, of reason – are blurred and dismantled. It is also a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and finally to menopause. Some of the themes explored include: the intersection of horror, monstrosity and sexual difference; the relationships between normative female (hetero)sexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; embodiment and subjectivity in horror films about pregnancy and abortion; reproductive technologies, monstrosity and ‘mad science’; the discursive construction and interrogation of monstrous motherhood; and the relationships between menopause, menstruation, hagsploitation and ‘abject barren’ bodies in horror. The book not only offers a feminist interrogation of gynaehorror, but also a counter-reading of the gynaehorrific, that both accounts for and opens up new spaces of productive, radical and subversive monstrosity within a mode of representation and expression that has often been accused of being misogynistic. It therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film specifically, while also providing new insights in the broader area of popular culture, gender and film philosophy.

Author : Monica J. Casper
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2022-03-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781978825963

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Babylost by Monica J. Casper Pdf

The U.S. infant mortality rate is among the highest in the industrialized world, and Black babies are far more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life. Maternal mortality rates are also very high. Though the infant mortality rate overall has improved over the past century with public health interventions, racial disparities have not. Racism, poverty, lack of access to health care, and other causes of death have been identified, but not yet adequately addressed. The tragedy is twofold: it is undoubtedly tragic that babies die in their first year of life, and it is both tragic and unacceptable that most of these deaths are preventable. Despite the urgency of the problem, there has been little public discussion of infant loss. The question this book takes up is not why babies die; we already have many answers to this question. It is, rather, who cares that babies, mostly but not only Black and Native American babies, are dying before their first birthdays? More importantly, what are we willing to do about it? This book tracks social and cultural dimensions of infant death through 58 alphabetical entries, from Absence to ZIP Code. It centers women’s loss and grief, while also drawing attention to dimensions of infant death not often examined. It is simultaneously a sociological study of infant death, an archive of loss and grief, and a clarion call for social change.

Author : Emma Milne
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781839096228

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Criminal Justice Responses to Maternal Filicide by Emma Milne Pdf

Milne provides a comprehensive analysis of conviction outcomes through court transcripts of 14 criminal cases in England and Wales during 2010 to 2019. Drawing on feminist theories of responsibilisation and 'gendered harm', she critically reflects on the gendered nature of criminal justice's responses to suspected infanticide.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:531032713

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Motherhood is Murder by Anonim Pdf

Author : Cheryl L. Meyer,Michelle Oberman,Kelly White
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2001-08
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 9780814756447

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Mothers who Kill Their Children by Cheryl L. Meyer,Michelle Oberman,Kelly White Pdf

Based on an extensive review of the newspaper, medical and social science literature, the authors propose a comprehensive typology of maternal filicide, answering the question - Why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child?. These mothers are not a homogenous group. In obvious ways, intervention strategies should differ for a teenager who denies her pregnancy and then kills her newborn and a mother who kills her two toddlers out of mental illness or to further a relationship. This typology will help to distinguish the different cases that commonly occur and the patterns they follow in order to make more effective prevention and treatment planning possible.

Author : Gregg Olsen
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2007-04-01
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781429907514

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Bitter Almonds by Gregg Olsen Pdf

Stella Nickell's small-time world was one of big-time dreams. In 1986, her biggest one came true when her husband died during a seizure, making her the beneficiary of a $175,000-plus insurance payoff—until authorities discovered Bruce Nickell's headache capsules had been laced with cyanide. In an attempt to cover her tracks, Stella did the unconscionable. She saw to it that a stranger would also become a "random casualty" of cyanide-tainted painkillers. But Stella's cunning plan came undone when her daughter Cynthia notified federal agents. And troubling questions lingered like the secret of bitter almonds... What would turn a gregarious barfly like Stella into a cold-hearted killer overnight? Why would Cynthia, a mirror image of her mother, turn on her own flesh and blood? Did Cynthia reveal everything she knew about the crimes? The stunning answers would unfold in a case that sparked a national uproar, dug deep into a troubled family history, and exposed an American mother for the pretty poison she was. Gregg Olsen's Bitter Almonds is true crime writing at its best.

Author : Laura Harrison
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2022-08-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781479801183

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Losing Sleep by Laura Harrison Pdf

New insights into the anxiety over infant sleep safety New parents are inundated with warnings about the fatal risks of “co-sleeping,” or sharing a bed with a newborn, from medical brochures and website forums, to billboard advertisements and the evening news. In Losing Sleep, Laura Harrison uncovers the origins of the infant sleep safety debate, providing a window into the unprecedented anxieties of modern parenthood. Exploring widespread rhetoric from doctors, public health experts, and the media, Harrison explains why our panic has reached an all-time high. She traces the way safe sleep standards in the United States have changed, and shows how parents, rather than broader systems of inequality that impact issues of housing and precarity, are increasingly being held responsible for infant health outcomes. Harrison shows that infant mortality rates differ widely by race and are linked to socioeconomic status. Yet, while racial disparities in infant mortality point to systemic and structural causes, the discourse around infant sleep safety often suggests that individual parents can protect their children from these tragic outcomes, if only they would make the right choices about safe sleep. Harrison argues that our understanding of sleep-related infant death, and the crisis of infant mortality in general, has burdened parents, especially parents of color, in increasingly punitive ways. As the government takes a more visible role in criminalizing parents, including those whose children die in their sleep, this book provides much-needed insight into a new era of parenthood.

Author : John Kerr
Publisher : Kerr Publishing
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022-09-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781875703531

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The Big Folbigg Mistake by John Kerr Pdf

Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of killing her four children by opinions – medical, literary and her estranged husband’s opinion - nearly 20 years ago. There never was hard evidence of homicide in the infants’ deaths. This book traces her life story, the rise and fall of a medical mania that saw so-called ‘smother mothers’ imprisoned and then released as sound science replaced pseudo-scientific nonsense, and how her diaries were mis-read. The way the case against her was pursued will chill the blood of anyone who has ever gone out, fallen in love and considered having children, as that is all this woman did to get sentenced to 40 years. It explains in the language of the lay person why the finest minds in Australian science by the score joined in a petition - just let her out, fix your criminal justice system later – in a move without precedent anywhere. The scientific story is exciting, inspirational and a wake-up call. That Ms Folbigg is still behind bars today is a tale of pig-headedness, scientific illiteracy, poor judgement and perhaps implicit bias. Whatever, a good scrub won’t fix it; some reconstruction is needed. The strong woman at the core of this story has good friends and a legal team whose perseverance will replenish readers’ sense of what can be done. Among the expert witnesses are men and women whose commitment to the truth inspires. Their genetic and medical evidence is here made simple, digestible and compelling. The book lists some ideas for overdue legal reforms.