Part of Mom's Penalty for Killing Baby: 10 Pregnancy Tests

Plus house arrest and probation
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 2, 2018 10:00 AM CST
Part of Mom's Penalty for Killing Baby: 10 Pregnancy Tests
She'll have to take a test every six months.   (Getty Images/mraoraor)

A Canadian woman who pleaded guilty to killing her newborn after an unrecognized pregnancy has been handed what's believed to be the first decision of its kind in Canada: The 43-year-old woman must take a pregnancy test every six months for the next five years and submit the results to authorities, a Montreal court ruled Thursday, per the Guardian. The move comes after the woman gave birth unexpectedly at her home in July 2016. The newborn, the woman's fourth child, was found in a plastic bag with head wounds apparently inflicted with scissors and died from the effects of asphyxiation days later at a hospital, reports the CBC. The mother, whose name has not been released, was diagnosed with non-psychotic pregnancy denial and dissociative amnesia.

It was the second time she had failed to recognize she was pregnant, though in the other case she was alerted to the pregnancy during an unrelated hospital visit at 32 weeks and there was no harm done to the resulting child, reports the Montreal Gazette. If she gets pregnant again, her sentence means "there will be no more denial of pregnancy as there was the last time," her lawyer, Joseph La Leggia, tells the CBC. He tells the Gazette his client is voluntarily taking pregnancy tests each month. The sentence will also see the woman serve 20 months of house arrest and three years of probation for infanticide. Quebec's youth protection service previously found the woman was an excellent mother who posed no risk to her other children. (A mother of three had amnesia for a decade.)

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