Editing Infanticide (section)

===Australia===
Estimations of the prevalence of infanticide among [[Aboriginal Australians]] vary widely.<ref name=Berndt-Berndt-p470>{{cite book |last1=Berndt |first1=Ronald M. |last2=Berndt |first2=Catherine H. |author-link1=Ronald Berndt |author-link2=Catherine Berndt |title=The World of the First Australians |date=1977 |publisher=Ure Smith |location=Sydney |page=470 |isbn=978-0-7254-0272-3 |edition=2 |url=https://archive.org/details/worldoffirstaust00bern}}</ref>
Many early European settlers considered it to be extremely common.
For example, an 1866 issue of ''The Australian News for Home Readers'' informed readers that "the crime of infanticide is so prevalent amongst the natives that it is rare to see an infant".<ref>{{cite news|title=My First Born|newspaper=Australian News for Home Readers|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63170296|access-date=13 April 2013|location=Victoria, Australia|date=20 January 1866|page=5|via=National Library of Australia|archive-date=26 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200526151041/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63170296/|url-status=live}}</ref>
In later times, attitudes shifted and the issue became contested.
Author [[Susanna de Vries]] said in 2007 that her accounts of Aboriginal violence, including infanticide, were censored by publishers in the 1980s and 1990s. She told reporters that the censorship "stemmed from guilt over the [[Stolen Generations|stolen children]] question". [[Keith Windschuttle]] weighed in on the conversation, saying this type of censorship started in the 1970s. In the same article [[Louis Nowra]] suggested that infanticide in customary Aboriginal law may have been because it was difficult to keep an abundant number of Aboriginal children alive; there were life-and-death decisions modern-day Australians no longer have to face.<ref name="Aboriginalviolence'Sanitised'2007">{{cite news|title=Aboriginal violence was 'sanitised '|url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/aboriginal-violence-was-sanitised/story-e6frg6nf-1111113906387|newspaper=[[The Australian]]|access-date=13 April 2013|author=Justine Ferrari|date=7 July 2007|archive-date=26 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200526151048/https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/aboriginal-violence-was-sanitised/story-e6frg6nf-1111113906387?nk=aee3ce3213cb87117e716c2f6edf4505-1590505847%2F|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Image:Daisy may bates.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|[[Daisy Bates (author)|Daisy Bates]] with a group of Aboriginal women, circa 1911]]
Liz Conor's 2016 work, ''Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women'', a culmination of 10 years of research, found that stories about Aboriginal women were told through a colonial lens of racism and misogyny. Vague stories of infanticide and cannibalism were repeated as reliable facts, and sometimes originated in accounts told by members of rival tribes about the other. She also refers to [[Daisy Bates (author)|Daisy Bates]]' now contested accounts of such practices, reproaching some historians for accepting them too uncritically.<ref>{{cite web | title="A Book of Lies": Settler impressions of Aboriginal women | website=Australian Women's History Network | date=7 May 2017 | url=https://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/a-book-of-lies/ | access-date=26 October 2023 | archive-date=26 October 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231026114551/https://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/a-book-of-lies/ | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=Healy on Conor, 'Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women' | website=H-Net | url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/19399/reviews/168406/healy-conor-skin-deep-settler-impressions-aboriginal-women | access-date=26 October 2023 | archive-date=26 October 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231026114551/https://networks.h-net.org/node/19399/reviews/168406/healy-conor-skin-deep-settler-impressions-aboriginal-women | url-status=live }}</ref>

The anthropologists [[Ronald Berndt]] and [[Catherine Berndt]] note that "infanticide does seem to have been practised occasionally almost all over Aboriginal Australia, but it cannot have been so frequent as [[George Taplin|Taplin]]&nbsp;... and Bates&nbsp;... suggest", while also cautioning that others "underestimated" its prevalence. The flesh of killed infants was sometimes [[child cannibalism|eaten]], but this was not always the case. Usually only parts of the body were eaten, in "the hope that the child will be born again, or that strength will accrue to another child".<ref name=Berndt-Berndt-p470/>

====South Australia and Victoria====
According to [[William D. Rubinstein]], "Nineteenth-century European observers of [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal]] life in South Australia and [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]] reported that about 30% of Aboriginal infants were killed at birth."<ref>{{Cite book | last = Rubinstein | first = W. D.| title = Genocide: a history| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=nMMAk4VwLLwC&pg=PA16| publisher = Pearson Education| year = 2004| page = 16| isbn = 978-0-582-50601-5 }}</ref>

In 1881 [[James Dawson (activist)|James Dawson]] wrote a passage about infanticide among Indigenous people in the western district of Victoria, which stated that "Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex.
It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed."<ref name=VictorianAboriginalInfanticide>{{cite journal |title=Australian Aborigines: The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia |journal=Nature |volume=24 |issue=623 |pages=529–30 |author=James Dawson |year=1881 |bibcode=1881Natur..24..529T |doi=10.1038/024529a0 |s2cid=4118217 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1948095 |access-date=2 July 2019 |archive-date=2 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191202202336/https://zenodo.org/record/1948095 |url-status=live }}<br />Reprinted in {{cite book |last=Dawson |first=James |year=2009|title=Australian Aborigines: the Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-00655-2}}</ref>

He also wrote "When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed.
The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it.
Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally."<ref name=VictorianAboriginalInfanticide />

====Western Australia====
In 1937, a Christian reverend in the [[Kimberley (Western Australia)|Kimberley]] offered a "baby bonus" to Aboriginal families as a deterrent against infanticide and to increase the birthrate of the local Indigenous population.<ref name=RevLoveBabyBonus>{{cite news|title=Iron-Roofed Cottage as Baby Bonus|page=2|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85590904|newspaper=The Daily News|access-date=13 April 2013|location=Perth, Western Australia|date=11 March 1937|via=National Library of Australia|archive-date=14 March 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200314132645/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/85590904|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Australian Capital Territory====
A [[Canberra]]n journalist in 1927 wrote of the "cheapness of life" to the Aboriginal people local to the Canberra area 100&nbsp;years before. "If drought or bush fires had devastated the country and curtailed food supplies, babies got a short shift. Ailing babies, too would not be kept", he wrote.<ref name=CanberraBlacks1927>{{cite news|title=Canberra Blacks. In early settlement days|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16374628|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|access-date=11 April 2013|author=W. P. Bluett|date=21 May 1927|page=11|via=National Library of Australia|archive-date=26 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200526151045/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16374628/|url-status=live}}</ref>

====New South Wales====
A bishop wrote in 1928 that it was common for Aboriginal Australians to restrict the size of their tribal groups, including by infanticide, so that the food resources of the tribal area may be sufficient for them.<ref name=AustraliaSMH1928>{{cite news|title=The Aboriginal. Our great waste product|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16513617|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|access-date=13 April 2013|author=Stephen Davies|date=1 December 1928|page=11|via=National Library of Australia|archive-date=26 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200526151053/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16513617/|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Northern Territory====
Annette Hamilton, a professor of anthropology at [[Macquarie University]], who carried out research in the Aboriginal community of [[Maningrida]] in [[Arnhem Land]] during the 1960s, wrote that prior to that time part-European babies born to Aboriginal mothers had not been allowed to live, and that "mixed-unions are frowned on by men and women alike as a matter of principle".<ref name=Australia1999Brunton>{{cite web|title=Moral Dilemma Not Merely A Question of Black and White |url=http://www.ipa.org.au/news/682/moral-dilemma-not-merely-a-question-of-black-and-white/pg/8|publisher=Courier Mail|access-date=13 April 2013|author=Ron Brunton|date=13 March 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130522000520/http://www.ipa.org.au/news/682/moral-dilemma-not-merely-a-question-of-black-and-white/pg/8|archive-date=22 May 2013|df=dmy-all}}</ref>