Women who kill their newborns are deeply unwell, so why are they being tried for murder? | Julie Wheelwright

The crime of infanticide provides context for tragic cases such as Paris Mayo's - but courts are becoming ever harsher

Last week, 19-year-old Paris Mayo was sentenced to at least 12 years in prison for the murder of her newborn baby when she was 15. After concealing her pregnancy, Mayo delivered her baby alone, silently, in her parents' home in Ross-on-Wye while upstairs her father, who would die 10 days later, was undergoing dialysis, and her mother slept.

Mayo told police the baby all of a sudden popped out" while she leaned against a windowsill downstairs. Terrified of being discovered, she crushed her baby's head and stuffed his mouth with cotton wool balls before concealing his body in a bin bag, explaining: I didn't want anyone to throw him away, I just wanted someone to deal with it."

Julie Wheelwright is a historian and author of Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium

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