영아범죄에 대한 입법론적 검토

This article brings focus into a question, whether the rules against infant-crimes in the existing criminal law are valid or not. According to the korean criminal law, when the parents or the other persons on a direct family line kill a child during birth or instantly after birth under special motive to conceal their dishonour or to avoid the difficulty in bringing it up because of financial problem etc., they will be punished lighter than in the case of killing ordinary people, namely of murder in general(art. 251, infanticide). On the other hand, when the parents or the other persons on a direct family line abandon a child(nursing baby) and leave it alone without any support under special motive to conceal their dishonour etc. they will be punished lighter than in the case of leaving ordinary people alone who need any help due to their age or disease etc.(art. 272). I suggest that two rules be abolished. As follows are main arguments to think so. Those rules were established in 1953. From that time on there was a great change in korean society, especially in the respect of the socio-economic conditions and the cognition of citizens as to value of infant-life. Therefore, there is no reason to keep up those rules at present. In other words, there is not any rational ground more to allow the special motives(situations) to be the reasons for reducing the liability of the offenders. More important is that according to modern medical science it’s very questionable whether pregnant women generally in the process of birth fall into abnormal or confused state of mind. Abandoning a nursing baby and leaving it alone is a typical case that ought to be applied by general rule(art. 270-Ⅰ), which protects ordinary people(in concrete, the safety of their lives or the completeness of their bodies) who need any help due to their age or disease etc. It is also undesirable to maintain the special reducing rule like infanticide in that the value of all human beings is equal regardless of age or social position etc.. I think that in legal protection of human life the legislators should put emphasis on the sameness, not the difference of human being.