A criminal case study of abortion and infanticide on the Prairies

From a history article:

Clearly, then, the reality of criminal abortion and infanticide in the prairie west during this period was a sad and sordid one. There is no sign of women asserting control of their generative functions as a step towards liberation. Nor is there a sign of any underground network of informed women and sympathetic men which operated outside the law helping women to escape the unreasonable demands of a male-dominated society that they bear unwanted children. Instead, where the circumstances are known, the cases which came to the attention of the Mounted Police were of people ridding themselves of the products of irregular relationships. At that time the law and society did not accept that the penalty for a conception of inconvenience was death to the fetus or to the infant. The police and the judicial system were conscientious in pursuing the criminal acts of abortion and infanticide. There was, however, a moderating factor in the bent of this pursuit. This was a recognition in individual cases that the mother was often a victim as well as the child, a fact that was reflected in leniency of treatment. Although there were occasional expressions of outrage by the judges, the policemen or the public at particularly cruel acts of abortion or infanticide, there was no sense of a moral urge for a crusade against such abuse. This is, I believe, because abortions and infanticides were isolated acts, seen as all too human failures, admittedly more common as the white population grew, but uncommon enough not to be any threat to social order on the prairies.