Women charged with killing their infant children will now be prosecuted for manslaughter rather than being charged with murder and forced to raise the defence of diminished responsibility, under legislation passed by the Dáil.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said he wanted to "remove what is an out of date and medically unsupportable proposition" from the Infanticide Act and to "modernise the language used in that Act to deal adequately with the phenomenon of mothers who, shortly after birth, unfortunately injure their child in circumstances where if it was a stranger it would amount to murder".
The Opposition accepted the amendment as part of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Bill.
A necessary condition for a finding of infanticide is that "at the time of the killing of a child under 12 months, the balance of the mother's mind was disturbed by reason either of her not having fully recovered from giving birth to the child or the effect of lactation after the birth of a child".
On humane grounds, the Act "enables the jury to return a verdict of infanticide instead of murder in such cases, with the punishment being as for manslaughter", rather than requiring "that the accused be first charged with murder and the defence of diminished responsibility must be raised by the defendant".
Mr McDowell also changed the legislation to remove the reference to punishment "which is objectionable in this day and age in these unfortunate circumstances". He removed the reference to lactation in the 1949 Act.
