A Mother's Crime to Her Newborn Child in the Iraqi penal Code and other countries. (comparative study)

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Mortada Hassan Jassim

Abstract

The penalty for premeditated murder in the Iraqi Penal Code is death or life
imprisonment. The legislator went further than that through the provision (D) of
the Article (406), which states (Capital punishment shall be imposed on anyone
who intentionally kills a soul in one of the following cases) (d / If the murdered is
one of the killer's descents ); we see in this article that the legislator has
emphasized the punishment and considers it an aggravating circumstance when
committing the crime of murder, while we find that there is an explicit legal
article that excludes the mother from the punishment for premeditated murder,
which is the Article (407) that refers to (punishing with imprisonment for a period
not exceeding ten years or imprisonment for a period of no less than one year
انؼزاق
جايؼح يٛظاٌ – كهٛح انمإٌَ
يجهح يٛظاٌ نهذراطاخ انمإََٛحانًمارَح
ISSN-2521-4675
562
for the mother who kills her newborn child out of shame if she was pregnant
with an incest child).
So the legislator gave the mother a legal mitigating excuse and determined
the crime of killing her newborn child to avoid shame in clear terms through the
provision of the Article (407). So, he/she did not prevent her from fully criminal
responsibility whereas the penal laws of many countries have indicated that the
killing of a mother to her newborn child is a crime and set their own legal terms
as they disagreed with certain details and reasons such as (Jordan, Switzerland,
France, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, and Iran).
There was also another opinion by the Islamic jurisprudence in this case, as it
sometimes gave the right to the father to kill the child and at other times it gave
the right to the mother, and the third opinion included the two to kill the
newborn. Here the penal laws also have different stances regarding different law
sources. Some of them take jurisprudence and Islamic law as the main source,
and others rely on situational sources

Article Details

How to Cite
مرتضى حسن جاسم. (2020). A Mother’s Crime to Her Newborn Child in the Iraqi penal Code and other countries. (comparative study). MIsan Journal of Comparative Legal Studies, 1(2), 265–293. https://doi.org/10.61266/mjcls.v1i2.43
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