The Death Penalty’s Abolition and Infanticide’s Invention: A Neglected Nexus

Abstract Decades before Canada abolished the death penalty, it removed infanticide from the Criminal Code ’s offences punishable by death. In 1948, this form of culpable homicide became punishable by imprisonment up to a maximum of three years. Although this statutory invention has been linked to the post-war rise in the pathologization of women’s violence and tied to legislators’ concerns over jury nullification, its nexus with the death penalty’s abolition has been overlooked. If the prospect of capital punishment did not deter women from killing their newborns, could the death penalty be justified for other forms of culpable homicide? Critics who posed this question about neonaticide wedged open the consideration of other forms of homicide and categories of offenders, undermining long standing certainties over the deterrent potency of capital punishment. Rather than a step in the abolition movement, the amendment merits acknowledgment as a significant move against the death penalty.