Nepal - exploited by older married man - young unmarried mother accused of infanticide.

In Nepal, it is considered sinful for a woman to have sexual intercourse before marriage while the male is exonerated. The female will be branded a loose character outcast by family and society. Only a small percentage of women who feel the other way and stand mentally strong or who have family support come out to seek justice. Despite the stringent law, the loopholes in the justice mechanism re-victimise female victims. We report a case where a young unmarried pregnant woman who gave birth alone was charged with infanticide.

Effects of state contraceptive insurance mandates.

Using U.S. Natality data for 1996 through 2009 and an event analysis specification, we investigate the dynamics of the effects of state insurance contraceptive mandates on births and measures of parental investment: prenatal visits, non-marital childbearing, and risky behaviors during pregnancy. We analyze outcomes separately by age, race, and ethnicity. Among young Hispanic women, we find a 4% decline in the birth rate. There is evidence of a decrease in births to single mothers, consistent with increased wantedness. We also find evidence of selection into motherhood, which could explain the lack of a significant effect on birth outcomes.

From Crime to Disease: Laws on Infanticide in the Modern Era.

This is the third of three papers investigating the legislative history concerning infanticide. After Antiquity and the Middle Ages, this paper focuses on legislative reforms during the last 400 years. Despite dreadful punishment, the practice remained frequent until safe abortion became available. In the 17th century, the rate of executions of women for this crime was 1 per 100,000 inhabitants. The actual incidence greatly exceeded this figure. The death penalty failed to deter, and punishing fornication promoted rather than prevented infanticide. Well into the 18th century, severely malformed infants were killed. The lung flotation test, albeit unreliable, was used to save the mother from the death penalty. When the motives for infanticide - poverty, shame, despair, and preserving honour - became understood in the late 18th century, the image of the 'child murderess' changed, and infanticide shifted from constituting a capital crime to a privileged delict. Illegitimate pregnancy was no longer punished, and lying-in hospitals for pregnant unmarried women and foundling hospitals for their children were established. Specific infanticide laws were issued in Prussia in 1756, Britain in 1803, and France in 1811. Once psychosis and denial of pregnancy became understood, severe penalties were no longer issued. The justifications for lenient legislation included social circumstances, difficult proof, and curtailed protection of the newborn due to its illegitimacy, helplessness, and diminished awareness. Thoughts on the limited right to live of newborn infants are still hampering ethical decisions when the beginning and end of life are near each other.

[Uterine subrogation: medical and legal aspects of the first legally supported case in Argentina]. / Subrogación uterina. Aspectos médicos y jurídicos del primer caso con sustento legal en la Argentina.

A woman aged 38 was referred to this center for surrogacy treatment, after subtotal ablation of her uterus due to a severe postpartum hemorrhage. Her hormonal profiles and ovarian structure were normal. The husband proved fertile and semen analysis was normal. The carrier, a woman 39 years old, fertile with two children of her own, and a long bonding friendship with the patient. After hormonal stimulation with gonadotropins and GnRH antagonist, six mature oocytes were obtained. These originated four embryos after in vitro fertilization, three of which were transferred to the carrier, achieving a singleton pregnancy which led to the birth of a normal child, now more than a year old. A lawsuit was filed after birth requesting the baby be registered with the biological parents name. The judge granted the request based on evidence and testimonies provided, international jurisprudence history and specification in Article 19 of the Argentine Constitution: "No inhabitant of the Nation shall be obliged to do what the law does not demand .nor be deprived of what it does not prohibit". This is an almost ideal example of the proceedings in a case of subrogation. However, we must always bear in mind the fact that in our country there is as yet no regulatory framework for these treatments, therefore there is a high probability of conflict.

Subrogación uterina: Aspectos médicos y jurídicos del primer caso con sustento legal en la Argentina / Uterine subrogation: Medical and legal aspects of the first legally supported case in Argentina

Una mujer de 38 años de edad fue derivada a nuestro centro para un tratamiento de maternidad subrogada, por haber sufrido la ablación subtotal de su útero a causa de una hemorragia puerperal grave. Su perfil hormonal y estructura ovárica eran normales. El esposo tenía fertilidad probada y un espermograma normal. La subrogante era una mujer de 39 años, fértil, con dos hijos propios y con un largo vínculo de amistad con la paciente. Luego de una estimulación con gonadotropinas y antagonista de Gn-RH se obtuvieron 6 ovocitos maduros por punción folicular, que originaron 4 embriones por fertilización in vitro. Tres de ellos evolucionaron y fueron transferidos a la subrogante, lográndose un embarazo único que concluyó con el nacimiento de una niña normal que ya tiene dos años cumplidos. Se inició una acción solicitando la inscripción de la beba ya nacida a nombre de los padres procreacionales. El juez finalmente la otorgó basándose en las pruebas y testimonios aportados, los antecedentes en la jurisprudencia internacional, y el hecho de que según el artículo 19 de la Constitución Nacional: "Ningún habitante de la Nación será obligado a hacer lo que no manda la ley, ni privado de lo que ella no prohíbe". Este es un ejemplo casi ideal de cómo se puede desarrollar un caso de subrogación. Sin embargo, hay que tener en cuenta que en nuestro país no existe aún un marco regulatorio para estos tratamientos, por lo que no queda exenta la posibilidad de conflicto.

A woman aged 38 was referred to this center for surrogacy treatment, after subtotal ablation of her uterus due to a severe postpartum hemorrhage. Her hormonal profiles and ovarian structure were normal. The husband proved fertile and semen analysis was normal. The carrier, a woman 39 years old, fertile with two children of her own, and a long bonding friendship with the patient. After hormonal stimulation with gonadotropins and GnRH antagonist, six mature oocytes were obtained. These originated four embryos after in vitro fertilization, three of which were transferred to the carrier, achieving a singleton pregnancy which led to the birth of a normal child, now more than a year old. A lawsuit was filed after birth requesting the baby be registered with the biological parents name. The judge granted the request based on evidence and testimonies provided, international jurisprudence history and specification in Article 19 of the Argentine Constitution: "No inhabitant of the Nation shall be obliged to do what the law does not demand .nor be deprived of what it does not prohibit". This is an almost ideal example of the proceedings in a case of subrogation .However, we must always bear in mind the fact that in our country there is as yet no regulatory framework for these treatments, therefore there is a high probability of conflict.

Estimación del aislamiento genético e ilegitimidad en 60 comunidades hondureñas mediante el análisis de apellidos / Estimation of genetic isolation and illegitimacy in 60 Honduran communities by means of surname analysis

Antecedentes: La búsqueda de aislamientos genéticos, i.e. poblaciones humanas aisladas, es importante para la salud pública puesto que la endogamia aumenta la prevalencia de enfermedades mendelianas. Además, la frecuencia de alelos deletéreos en general podría verse aumentada por efecto fundador y deriva génica. El aislamiento genético puede ser estimado mediante análisis de las proporciones de apellidos con las técnicas de isonimia.Objetivos: Determinar la estructura genética aproximada, la presencia de aislamientos genéticos y la proporción de hijos ilegítimos mediante el análisis de frecuencias de apellidos e isonimia en 60 comunidades de cinco municipios rurales Hondureños.Método: Los apellidos se obtuvieron de la base de datos del TSE. Se determinaron los coeficientes de endogamia FST, FIT y FIS a partir de las proporciones de apellidos por los métodos matemáticos descritos por Crowy Mange. Se calculó la tasa de ilegitimidad como la proporción de sujetos con un solo apellido. Resultados: Las comunidades más aisladas fueron las del municipio de Trinidad, seguidas por Orica. Las menos aisladas correspondieron a los municipios de predominio afrodescendiente. Orica presentó la tasa de ilegitimidad más elevada. Discusión: El método de isonimia utilizado reveló la presencia de aislamientos genéticos que deberán ser estudiados más a fondo desde el punto de vista de la epidemiología genética. La diversidad encontrada en las comunidades afrodescendientes tiene como origen la contribución anglosajona. La alta proporción de ilegitimidad en Orica podría estar relacionada con paternidad irresponsable y bajo estatus socioeconómico con consecuencias adversas para el bienestar social y la salud pública...

Releasing mother's burdens: child abandonment and retrieval in Madrid, 1890-1935.

In nineteenth-century Europe, the foundling hospital grew beyond its traditional purpose of mitigating the shame of unwed mothers by also permitting widows, widowers, and poor married couples to abandon their children there temporarily. In the Foundling Hospital of Madrid (FHM), this new short-term abandonment could be completely anonymous due to the implementation of a wheel­a device on the outside wall of the institution that could be turned to place a child inside­which remained open until 1929. The use of survival-analysis techniques to disentangle the determinants of retrieval in a discrete framework reveals important differences in the situations of the women who abandoned their children at the FHM, partly depending on whether they accessed it through the Maternity Hospital after giving birth or they accessed it directly. The evidence suggests that those who abandoned their children through the Maternity Hospital retrieved them only when they had attained a certain degree of economic stability, whereas those who abandoned otherwise did so just as soon as the immediate condition prompting the abandonment had improved.

Maternalism, race, class and citizenship: aspects of illegitimate motherhood in Nazi Germany.

This article juxtaposes three types of illegitimate motherhood that came in the wake of the Second World War in Nazi Germany. The first found institutional support in the Lebensborn project, an elite effort to raise the flagging birth-rates, which at the same time turned a new page in the history of sexuality. The second came before the lower courts in the form of paternity and guardianship suits that had a long precedent, and the third was a social practice that the regime considered a 'mass crime' among its female citizenry: namely, forbidden unions between German women and prisoners of war. Through these cases the article addresses issues such as morality, sexuality, paternity, citizenship and welfarism. The flesh-and-blood stories have been culled from the Lebensborn Dossiers and Special Court files, as well as cases from the lower courts.

Convict bastards, common-law unions, and shotgun weddings: premarital conceptions and ex-nuptial births in nineteenth-century Tasmania.

This article uses reconstituted family data from birth, death, and marriage registers to measure ex-nuptial fertility and premarital pregnancies in nineteenth-century Tasmania. It also examines the extent to which convict origins of European society on the island caused a departure from English norms of family formation behavior, during a period when men greatly outnumbered women. Illegitimacy was high during the convict period. From the mid-1850s, after the convict system collapsed, levels of ex-nupital births were relatively constant until the end of the century, as indicated both by the illegitimacy rate and by the proportion of marriages associated with prenuptial births. By the end of the nineteenth-century, rates of illegitimacy and prenuptial conceptions in Tasmania were well within the range of those of contemporary English-speaking populations.

The other woman and her child: extra-marital affairs and illegitimacy in twentieth-century Britain.

This article investigates the numbers of 'other women' and their children up until the 1960s in Britain. It analyses 'irregular and illicit unions' in the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now One Parent Families/Gingerbread), and explores evidence on these unions in the debates over the passage of the Divorce Acts of 1923 and 1937 as well as the Legitimacy Acts of 1926 and 1959. It suggests that the prevalence of illicit unions throughout the twentieth century and before allows us to question contemporary concerns about our supposed 'divorcing society' and the decline of family life in modern Britain.

The experience of pregnancy and childbirth for unmarried mothers in London, 1760-1866.

This article explores the experience of pregnancy and childbirth for unmarried mothers in the metropolis in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It draws upon, in particular, the infanticide cases heard at the Old Bailey between 1760 and 1866. Many of the women in these records found themselves alone and afraid as they coped with the pregnancy and birth of their first child. A great deal is revealed about the birthing body: the ambiguity surrounding the identification of and signs of pregnancy, labour and delivery, the place of birth and the degree of privacy, and the nature of, and dangers associated with, solitary childbirth.

Unmarried mothers in Ireland, 1880-1973.

This article explores the changing experiences and representation of Ireland's unmarried mothers from 1880 to 1973. It focuses on the stigma of illegitimacy in political and cultural discourse and the representation of unmarried mothers as immoral and their children as a drain on resources. These remained constant themes within the discourse of unmarried motherhood in Ireland throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article uses the records of philanthropic, government and religious organisations to chart the rising interest in the moral reformation of unmarried mothers at the end of the nineteenth century and rising tolerance towards them by the end of the twentieth century.

Paternity testing requested by private parties in Italy: some ethical considerations.

In Italy, judicial and extrajudicial requests for paternity testing have increased in recent years. A retrospective analysis of such private extrajudicial requests received by the legal medicine unit of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health of Padua University was conducted to identify problem areas most helpful in determining whether to accept private parties' requests for paternity testing. Such testing is most delicate when a presumptive father may be seeking to disown paternity and when testing is wanted without the consent of a member of the mother-child-father triangle. Tests that could establish paternity where none has been recognised are less problematic, as the child will not lose out. Legal and ethical-deontological aspects of consent, of the protection of minors and of children's and parents' need for follow-up interviews to deal with the outcome of such testing are carefully considered by the Padua University team when deciding whether to accept a request for testing. It is argued that because such issues are not dealt with by mail-order laboratories, the use of such services is inappropriate.

Innocence and experience: sexuality among young people in modern France, c. 1750-1950.

Prying into the sex lives of young people in the past has always proved a challenging exercise. Historians have often ended up relying on the testimony from adult observers or on the quantitative evidence provided by illegitimacy rates. This article adopts a more direct route by drawing on first-hand accounts of early sexual experiences written by French people in diaries, childhood reminiscences and autobiographies. As a preliminary, it analyses the way various authorities depicted young people as sexual (or non-sexual) beings, and the state of sex education in France before the mid-twentieth century. It then considers the way people depicted their first stirrings of sexuality during childhood and adolescence. Finally, it examines evidence from the "ego documents" on sexual relations in the run-up to marriage.