“There Is Nothing So Sacred as Human Life”: Infanticide and the State in Maine, 1877–1917

Abstract

From 1877 to 1896, Maine courts sentenced six women accused of infanticide to imprisonment for life. This harsh punishment was in stark contrast to the more lenient punishments given infanticides elsewhere. A close look at these cases through court documents, newspaper accounts, pardon petitions, and attorney general reports suggests that the trials marked a shift in the justice system in Maine as the state increasingly asserted its control over the communities’ response to crime. Historically, women’s expertise with regard to women’s bodies provided a place for them within the local legal system. Under the purview of the state’s attorneys general, the state increasingly assumed control over the detection, adjudication, and punishment of crime. While community members responded to crime with attention to the individual and the circumstances, the state called for the universal application of the written law regardless of the context and claimed that swift and inevitable retribution was necessary to protect all. This shift from the local to the state had a particular impact on women and their role within the community. Long accustomed to arbitrating issues surrounding pregnancy, women found their power to do so subverted and replaced by middle class professionals in distant urban locations.