Canada: Murder is Murder, Psychosis is Psychosis

Article here. Excerpt:

'This month, the Ontario Court of Appeal will decide if a mother on trial for killing her infant child can employ a defence of post-partum depression, and be sentenced to the lesser crime of infanticide as a result. Regardless how the case is decided, it raises the troubling question of why, under Canadian criminal law, infanticide is defined as a lesser crime than murder.

Without a doubt, post-partum depression and its more serious variant, post-partum psychosis, are real and serious mental health problems, the latter condition particularly so. However, there is no reason why these need to be treated differently from any other form of psychological impairment, or madness, recognized as mitigating factors in criminal cases. If a woman is so incapacitated by one of these conditions that she cannot be held responsible for her actions, then her defence should be the general one available to all those who plead not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. Or, if convicted, her condition could be introduced at the sentencing phase under the general procedures available to all convicted criminals. There is no need to classify her condition by reference to her status as a woman or parent.

Moreover, the nation has long outgrown the antiquated thinking behind making the notion that a baby’s death at a mother’s hands is a less serious crime than ordinary homicide. In a society that spends over a billion dollars a year on neonatal care to keep struggling infants alive — and which does not hesitate to remove infants from parental custody if they are in danger of harm — it is incongruous to treat “infanticide” as a crime punishable by a maximum of just five years in prison.'