Abortion Roman Style Versus Canadian Style

The degradation of the meaning and sanctity of life has its consequences.  An infant who finds himself in the birth-canal can be murdered with impunity, and in some cases, perhaps, with celebration.  Just inches and moments later that same baby has acquired all the rights of a citizenship and his life is protected by law... or so we may suppose.  But even a child knows that inches and seconds do not human rights make.

So it should not surprise us that, given the modern mindset among modern elites, an elitist Canadian Judge would defend a mother who strangled her newborn child.  Judge Joanne From "The Blaze":

“The fact that Canada has no abortion laws reflects that ‘while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,"

 So what is the punishment for a mother killing her newborn?

“Every female person who commits infanticide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”

This article brought to mind a passage from "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire" wherein Gibbons paints a similar picture, but with different motives.  A practice that had become somewhat common during Rome's decline was the killing of newborn infants.  But pay attention to the motivations.  Gibbons explains as follows:

There are many of [Constantine's] laws, which, as far as they concern the rights and property of individuals, and the practice of the bar, are more properly referred to the private than to the public jurisprudence of the empire; and he published many edicts of so local and temporary a nature, that they would ill deserve the notice of a general history. Two laws, however, may be selected from the crowd; the one for its importance, the other for its singularity; the former for its remarkable benevolence, the latter for its excessive severity. 1. The horrid practice, so familiar to the ancients, of exposing or murdering their new-born infants, was become every day more frequent in the provinces, and especially in Italy. It was the effect of distress; and the distress was principally occasioned by the intolerant burden of taxes, and by the vexatious as well as cruel prosecutions of the officers of the revenue against their insolvent debtors. The less opulent [well off] or less industrious part of mankind, instead of rejoicing in an increase of family, deemed it an act of paternal tenderness to release their children from the impending miseries of a life which they themselves were unable to support. The humanity of Constantine; moved, perhaps, by some recent and extraordinary instances of despair, * engaged him to address an edict to all the cities of Italy, and afterwards of Africa, directing immediate and sufficient relief to be given to those parents who should produce before the magistrates the children whom their own poverty would not allow them to educate. (*)

So in Canada, murdering your offspring is understandable because having babies can be depressing and onerous while in ancient Rome it was considered acceptable because the parents didn't want their children to experience the same distresses of poverty and enslavement by government.  It would seem that ancients rationalized it out of compassion for the child, while in modernity it is rationalized out of the compassion for the self.

It would seem to me that the charge of murder against the Canadian girl is a little too severe for our modern sensibilities.  Perhaps practicing medicine without a licence would be more agreeable to our palate.  After all, it's not like she murdered her child with a gun.
 
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* Gibbon, Edward (2008-07-24). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Kindle Locations 6406-6414).  . Kindle Edition.