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Part of the motivation for infanticide is the sense that it would be awful for the kid to be raised by someone else. The kid being raised by a stranger, losing control of the child, appears to be more awful than ending the child's life.
There is a similar motivation for abortion in most cases. This is why many women abort instead of putting the child up for adoption. Many pro-life organizations have realized this which is why they have moved on from promoting adoption to promoting support for young mothers and assistance with school and housing.
If you've been a pregnant woman maybe you understand. Maybe if you are a father you understand? I've been pregnant before at times where it felt impossible to have another kid. The temptation is not to then put the new kid up for adoption. That would be awful, having a kid somewhere out there and no idea what's going on. That little piece of your heart walking around out there without you to protect it.
The temptation is to kill the kid, to make the child not exist, to remove that bond entirely. It is highly irrational, but how many families put 2nd or 3rd siblings up for adoption vs abort them?
Women with two or more children are generally not opposed to pregnancy from a body horror aspect. Some may have health issues, but the majority give the reasoning that their family is already the right size, they can't afford another kid, and other reasons that would equally be an excuse to go to an adoption agency and voluntarily relinquish the kid in exchange for the adoptive parents covering the cost of health care (which they will happily do because infants are hard and expensive to adopt.)
Meanwhile, voluntary relinquishment of infants is low. Only 1% of babies born to never-married women were relinquished by their mothers for adoption within the first month of the babies’ lives. The number is much smaller for married women.
@Bombadil commented that "The fact that you can hold the baby in your arms changes the calculus so drastically." But consider that this is actually a separation to the mother. The birth of a baby is not the revelation of the baby to the mother but the beginning of a loss of intimacy. The baby is ever present to the mother while in the womb, realer than real, and yet there are still places where women can kill their kids up until the last day of pregnancy. We pretend that abortion after quickening exists solely for health reasons but the majority of third term abortions are for convenience. "The most common reasons for delay were that it took a long time to make arrangements (59%), to decide (39%) and to find out about the pregnancy (36%)."
I for one am happy my biological mother did not kill me.
Your bio-mother was a good person.
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