Pruncuciderea, text imperfect in actualul Cod penal [Infanticide, imperfect text in the current Criminal Code]

The history of civilization shows that apart from the individual aggressions between adults, that have been punished within a determinate social group, various forms of violence against children have been more or less tolerated, even approved by the adult society and that the history of humanity is marked by the maltreats against children. The infanticide direct or devious, under the form of adapting and subjecting newborns to risks was a long time practice tolerated even encouraged by society’s health, demographic and religious reasons. The infanticide is defined in the Romanian penal code in the article 177 to be the “murder of the newborn immediately after the birth by his mother found in a mental ill-state induced by the birth”. This legal text has many imperfections regarding the nature of this crime, the concept of the “newborn”, the mental condition of the mother and also by the time condition “immediately after the birth”. All this issues will be discussed in this following article making also connections to the other penal codes of other countries, taking in consideration medical and legal opinions that have been expressed in legal and medical literature. The project of the new Romanian penal code describes infanticide in a new way, setting a new temporal condition “24 hours after the birth” and introduces a new name for infanticide “killing or harming the newborn by his mother”. The definition of the crime is the same only that the new penal code inserted the imperative time condition also punishing the actions of harming the newborn made by his mother.