While they may be deluded and immature, mothers who commit neonaticide are rarely mentally ill, she said.

Rather, they practice what Oberman calls “magical thinking,” a tendency associated with adolescents that enables them to remain in denial throughout the pregnancy.

“They just wish it away,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have a miscarriage. Maybe I’m not really pregnant.”

Their avoidance of reality means these expectant mothers almost never seek prenatal medical care and fail to make any advance preparations, experts say.

“She’s working really, really hard not to think about this; and working really, really hard not to plan; and working really, really hard to hide her pregnancy from the people around her,” said Theresa Porter, a forensic psychologist who has published a review of 40 years of research on infanticide and neonaticide. “In order to be the type of person who might go to a clinic for an abortion or go to a baby drop, you have to be willing to engage in some thoughts about your problems, some planning.

“The evidence so far is that these women really work very hard to avoid it.”

As a result, they often give birth alone and outside of a hospital.

“Virtually all end up giving birth on a toilet,” Oberman said. “They go to the bathroom thinking they’re going to have a bowel movement and hours later they give birth.”

Even absent any prior planning, one might assume that a woman who unexpectedly gave birth would bring the baby to safety. But these women, who researchers have found are defined by their passivity, do not make that leap.

“When the baby’s born, in order for her to become a person who takes the baby to a Safe Haven, it requires a slip of everything,” Oberman said. “She’s in pain. She’s in shock. She’s lost a lot of blood, and is now going to have to formulate a plan to get dressed, cleaned up and get transportation to a drop-off point, if she even knew what that was.

“It would be a pretty big wave-the-magic-wand transformation for her to become that proactive.”

While experts say harming the child is not something these mothers anticipate doing, once thrust into the situation of having to handle a live childbirth on their own, they panic and act impulsively.

“There are definitely cases where there’s crying at birth and the mom right away realizes, ‘If I’m found right now, everything comes crashing down,'” Oberman said. “The same thing that led her to conceal her pregnancy will lead her to put the baby in a toilet or put a towel over the baby and smother it.”

Defense is key

Prosecutors frequently charge these women with murder, as the Champaign County state’s attorney did in Johnson’s case.

Whether they’re convicted of those charges, or found guilty of lesser crimes, largely depends on the quality of their legal representation, Oberman said.

“It’s up to the defense to make the incomprehensible comprehensible,” she said. “This is a monstrous, a heinous crime. And your task [as a defense lawyer] is to explain how that could be true, and yet that this girl isn’t a monster.

“In a way, once we understand how we were as teenagers, there’s a certain amount of, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.'”

To the extent there is any legal pattern in the adjudication of these types of crimes, Oberman said that cases initially charged as murders often result in manslaughter convictions.

Sentences for women convicted of killing their newborns run the gamut from probation with counseling to decades behind bars. Oberman, who has studied hundreds of neonaticide cases over the past two-plus decades, said women with competent legal representation generally receive sentences of no more than a year or two in prison, with many receiving only probation.

“It’s very hard to make sense of crimes so similar, in which one woman ends up serving life while another gets probation,” said Oberman, who added that she understands why people might view a light sentence for neonaticide as akin to getting away with murder.

Experts say many judges believe, however, that nothing positive can come from putting a mother who commits neonaticide behind bars, and conclude that the unremitting shame and stigmatization that mothers convicted of killing their babies experience is punishment enough.

Connections crucial

Due to the denial that pregnant mothers who commit neonaticide exhibit, there’s little evidence, experts say, to suggest that increased outreach and education about abortion, adoption or the availability of Safe Havens would directly benefit them.

Instead, researchers suggest the key to reducing the frequency of neonaticide might rely on getting friends and family members who suspect a loved one is in denial about her pregnancy to intervene.

“It requires either someone to notice, or for the person herself to come forward,” Porter said. “And since they aren’t going to come forward, it’s about helping others around this pregnancy to start asking questions.”

It’s quite rare that there isn’t at least one other person who knows about the pregnancy, experts say. In some cases, the pregnant woman tells a confidant, who keeps her secret. In others, friends or family members notice the woman’s weight gain and suspect she may be pregnant, but say nothing.

“One way to prevent this is to get into the high schools and make it clear to the other young women that they can report that they think their friend is hiding a pregnancy,” Porter said. “You would never tolerate your friend talking about suicide and not intervene. If you knew your friend had been hoarding pills or had stolen a parent’s gun, you would never hide that.

“If we say, ‘We know this happens. It’s part of being a good friend and a good human being to intervene,’ given the way females of that age socialize, I think that’s going to be much more effective than doing something in a more bureaucratic way.”

Oberman agreed that heightening awareness of the phenomenon of neonaticide, in addition to “a lot of Safe Haven education,” is the best current solution.

“Not because I think [Safe Haven education] will help the girl who had the baby in the bathroom,” she said. “But it might help start conversations.

“The best way to prevention is just through connection.