The record of Western Europe is summarized by Oscar Helmuth Werner,
Ph.D., in his book, _"The Unmarried Mother in German Literature."_
"Infanticide," says Dr. Werner, "was the most common crime in Western
Europe from the Middle Ages down to the end of the Eighteenth
Century." This fact, of course, means that it was even more largely
practiced by the married than the unmarried, the married mothers being
far greater in number.
"Another problem which confronted the church," he says in another
place, "was the practice of exposure and killing of children by legal
parents." A sort of final word from Dr. Werner is this: "Infanticide
by legal parents has practically ceased in civilized countries, but
abortion, its substitute, has not."
How desperately woman desired freedom to develop herself as an
individual, apart from motherhood, is indicated by the fact that
infanticide was "the most common crime of Western Europe," in spite of
the fact that some of the most terrible punishments ever inflicted by
law were meted out to those women who sought this means of escape from
the burden of unwanted children. Dr. Werner shows that in Germany, for
instance, in the year 1532, it was the law that those guilty of
infanticide were "to be buried alive or impaled.
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