Pathologization, Law, and Gender in Cases of Infanticide in Spain and the Netherlands in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Comparative Perspective

IF 0.8 3区 社会学 Q1 HISTORY
Willemijn Ruberg, Sara Serrano Martínez
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Abstract

This article compares how gender and pathologization were entangled in the laws on infanticide in Spain and the Netherlands in 1930–1960, as well as in court practices. Both countries knew lenient laws for women who killed their newborn babies. These laws themselves did not assume that these women were suffering from a mental disorder, even though they referred to emotional state. In Spain, where the notion of honor was more important in the law, from the 1940s a debate was held about the relationship between mental illness and infanticide laws in the context of the Franco regime's emphasis on pronatalism. While in Spain the institutional monopoly of the generalist forensic physician as preferred expert excluded psychiatrists, in the Netherlands forensic psychiatrists were more influential, and their role increased from the 1950s. The article argues that regardless of many differences in forensic and political culture in both countries infanticidal women were pathologized: in Spain mostly via some interpretations of the infanticide law, and in the Netherlands via forensic psychiatry. However, pathologization, we show, involved many lay actors such as lawyers, legal scholars, and probation services.
二十世纪中叶西班牙和荷兰杀婴案件中的病态化、法律和性别问题:比较视角
本文比较了 1930-1960 年西班牙和荷兰关于杀婴的法律以及法庭实践中如何将性别与病态化联系在一起。这两个国家对杀害新生儿的妇女都有宽大的法律。这些法律本身并不假定这些妇女患有精神疾病,尽管它们提到了情绪状态。在西班牙,荣誉的概念在法律中更为重要,从 20 世纪 40 年代开始,在佛朗哥政权强调产前主义的背景下,人们就精神疾病与杀婴法之间的关系展开了辩论。在西班牙,全科法医作为首选专家的制度性垄断将精神科医生排除在外,而在荷兰,法医精神科医生的影响力更大,他们的作用从 20 世纪 50 年代开始增强。文章认为,尽管两国的法医和政治文化存在诸多差异,但杀婴妇女都被病理学化了:在西班牙,主要是通过对杀婴法的某些解释,而在荷兰,则是通过法医精神病学。然而,我们发现,病理学化涉及许多非专业人士,如律师、法律学者和缓刑服务机构。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
12.50%
发文量
42
期刊介绍: Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History
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