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<p>Since the removal of infanticide as a mitigated form of homicide from the Argentine Penal Code in 1994, women who experience miscarriages, stillbirths, and perinatal accidents have faced prosecution for ‘aggravated murder’ and ‘child abandonment’. Drawing on judgments from courts at various levels across Argentina, this qualitative study examines the life histories of twenty-four women prosecuted for what I characterise as <i>involuntary obstetric incidents</i> between 2018 and 2024. The analysis reveals common themes in the women’s backgrounds, including lower socio-economic status, gender-based violence, young age, and other adverse circumstances, such as difficult socio-cultural contexts and family environments, disability and health issues, previous conflict with the law, and migration. Despite the treatment of these women as offenders by the criminal legal system, through a critical and feminist legal re-interpretation, I challenge this framing and argue that vulnerable backgrounds constitute the first step leading to their encounters with the state’s punitive power.</p>

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Criminalising the Vulnerable: Marginalisation and Precarity in the Lives of Women Prosecuted for Perinatal Deaths in Argentina

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月4日

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  • Belén Mattos-Castañeda

摘要

Since the removal of infanticide as a mitigated form of homicide from the Argentine Penal Code in 1994, women who experience miscarriages, stillbirths, and perinatal accidents have faced prosecution for ‘aggravated murder’ and ‘child abandonment’. Drawing on judgments from courts at various levels across Argentina, this qualitative study examines the life histories of twenty-four women prosecuted for what I characterise as involuntary obstetric incidents between 2018 and 2024. The analysis reveals common themes in the women’s backgrounds, including lower socio-economic status, gender-based violence, young age, and other adverse circumstances, such as difficult socio-cultural contexts and family environments, disability and health issues, previous conflict with the law, and migration. Despite the treatment of these women as offenders by the criminal legal system, through a critical and feminist legal re-interpretation, I challenge this framing and argue that vulnerable backgrounds constitute the first step leading to their encounters with the state’s punitive power.