ABSTRACT
The powerful evidence, everywhere, of sex-selective infanticide in Europe is likely to unsettle scholars of every political hue if they have not encountered it before. The desire to focus on “missing girls” alone is likely to lead us further astray, for there is no reason to assume that females were the only victims of such a tenacious and widespread practice. Microscopic research on smaller communities is likely to yield further refinements. Careful research of diocesan archives may shed light on strategies the hierarchy adopted to combat the practice. Scholars are just now extending this research into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they must avoid the temptation to amalgamate multiple years and multiple places. The research outlined above was not difficult to conduct. It should be possible to advance our knowledge of this hidden behaviour in a few short years.
