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Fetal abduction refers to the rare crime of child abduction by kidnapping of an at term pregnant woman and extraction of her fetus through a crude cesarean section. [1] Dr. Michael H. Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato have alternatively referred to this crime as "fetus-snatching" or "fetus abduction." [2] Homicide expert Vernon J. Geberth has used the term "fetal kidnapping." [3] In the small number of reported cases, a few pregnant victims and about half of their fetuses survived the assault and non-medically performed cesarean.
Fetal abduction does not refer to medically induced labor or obstetrical extraction. The definition of the subject does not include compulsory cesarean sections [4] for medical reasons nor child removal from parents for court-approved child protection. However, the "Children of the Disappeared" (desaparecidos) in the Argentine Dirty War are an example of criminal fetal abduction in state institutions as detailed by testimonies on cesarean delivery on desaparecidas and child adoption in a military hospital. [5] [6] Historical cases of cesarean extraction for fetal murder (not for child adoption) fall outside the subject definition. [7]
Fetal abductions typically start with the lie that the perpetrator is pregnant and often coincide with a fear of losing a romantic partner. Then the perpetrator murders a pregnant woman to claim the fetus as her own (as a stillborn baby or, if the fetus survives, as a newborn child). [8]
Fetal abduction is mostly perpetrated by women, usually after organized planning. [9] The abductor may befriend the pregnant victim. In some cases, the abductor impersonates a pregnant woman and later a puerperal mother, using weight gain and a prosthesis to fake a pregnancy and cutting of the reproductive organs to replicate injuries gained during birth. Some abductors then take the neonate to a hospital. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s spokesperson, Cathy Nahirny, stated in 2007, “Many times the abductor fakes a pregnancy and when it is time to deliver the baby, must abduct someone else's child”. [10] Criminal motives include delusions of fulfilling a partner relationship, child-bearing and childbirth. [11] [12] [13] [14]
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children recorded 18 cases of fetal abductions in the United States between 1983 and 2015, which represented 6% of the 302 recorded cases of infant abduction. [1]
Out of the 25 documented cases of fetal abduction, excluding attempts, there have been 4 instances where the mothers survived and 13 where the fetus survived. This list distinguishes actual abductions from attempted abductions. An attempt can involve severe harm inflicted on both the mother and fetus, but it does not result in the mother's murder or the extraction of the fetus.
A multiple birth is the culmination of one multiple pregnancy, wherein the mother gives birth to two or more babies. A term most applicable to vertebrate species, multiple births occur in most kinds of mammals, with varying frequencies. Such births are often named according to the number of offspring, as in twins and triplets. In non-humans, the whole group may also be referred to as a litter, and multiple births may be more common than single births. Multiple births in humans are the exception and can be exceptionally rare in the largest mammals.
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 is a United States law that recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
Coffin birth, also known as postmortem fetal extrusion, is the expulsion of a nonviable fetus through the vaginal opening of the decomposing body of a deceased pregnant woman due to increasing pressure from intra-abdominal gases. This kind of postmortem delivery occurs very rarely during the decomposition of a body. The practice of chemical preservation, whereby chemical preservatives and disinfectant solutions are pumped into a body to replace natural body fluids, have made the occurrence of "coffin birth" so rare that the topic is rarely mentioned in international medical discourse.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett was an American, 23-year-old, pregnant woman who was murdered in Skidmore, Missouri, in December 2004. The perpetrator, Lisa Marie Montgomery, then aged 36 years old, strangled Stinnett to death and cut her fetus from her womb. Montgomery was arrested in Kansas the next day and charged with kidnapping resulting in death – a federal crime. Stinnett's baby, who had survived the crude caesarean section, was safely recovered by authorities and returned to the father.
The Federal Medical Center, Carswell is a United States federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, for female inmates of all security levels, primarily with special medical and mental health needs. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a prison camp for minimum-security female inmates.
Fetal surgery also known as antenatal surgery, prenatal surgery, is a growing branch of maternal-fetal medicine that covers any of a broad range of surgical techniques that are used to treat congenital abnormalities in fetuses who are still in the pregnant uterus. There are three main types: open fetal surgery, which involves completely opening the uterus to operate on the fetus; minimally invasive fetoscopic surgery, which uses small incisions and is guided by fetoscopy and sonography; and percutaneous fetal therapy, which involves placing a catheter under continuous ultrasound guidance.
A Defense of Abortion is a moral philosophy essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1971. Granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, Thomson uses thought experiments to argue that the right to life does not include, entail, or imply the right to use someone else's body to survive and that induced abortion is therefore morally permissible. Thomson's argument has critics on both sides of the abortion debate, but it continues to receive defense. Despite criticism, "A Defense of Abortion" remains highly influential.
Fetal rights are the moral rights or legal rights of the human fetus under natural and civil law. The term fetal rights came into wide usage after Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion in the United States and was essentially overturned in 2022. The concept of fetal rights has evolved to include the issues of maternal substance use disorders, including alcohol use disorder and opioid use disorder. Most international human rights charters "clearly reject claims that human rights should attach from conception or any time before birth." While most international human rights instruments lack a universal inclusion of the fetus as a person for the purposes of human rights, the fetus is granted various rights in the constitutions and civil codes of some countries.
In pregnancy terms, quickening is the moment in pregnancy when the pregnant woman starts to feel the fetus's movement in the uterus. It was believed that the quickening marked the moment that a soul entered the fetus, termed ensoulment.
The born alive rule is a common law legal principle that holds that various criminal laws, such as homicide and assault, apply only to a child that is "born alive". U.S. courts have overturned this rule, citing recent advances in science and medicine, and in several states feticide statutes have been explicitly framed or amended to include fetuses in utero. Abortion in Canada is still governed by the born alive rule, as courts continue to hold to its foundational principles. In 1996, the Law Lords confirmed that the rule applied in English law but that alternative charges existed in lieu, such as a charge of unlawful or negligent manslaughter instead of murder.
Taegyo (Korean: 태교) refers to a traditional Korean concept that encompasses practices and beliefs related to prenatal development. Part of traditional Korean medicine, it dictates what actions a mother should take in order to have a healthy child.
Pemberton v. Tallahassee Memorial Regional Center, 66 F. Supp. 2d 1247, is a case in the United States regarding reproductive rights. In particular, the case explored the limits of a woman's right to choose her medical treatment in light of fetal rights at the end of pregnancy.
A fetus or foetus is the unborn offspring that develops from a mammal embryo. Following embryonic development, the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal development begins from the ninth week after fertilization and continues until the birth of a newborn. Prenatal development is a continuum, with no clear defining feature distinguishing an embryo from a fetus. However, a fetus is characterized by the presence of all the major body organs, though they will not yet be fully developed and functional and some not yet situated in their final anatomical location.
A Child Is Born is a 1965 photographic book by Swedish photojournalist Lennart Nilsson. The book consists of photographs charting the development of the human embryo and fetus from conception to birth; it is reportedly the best-selling illustrated book ever published. Nilsson's photographs are accompanied by text, written by doctors, describing prenatal development and offering advice on antenatal care. The images were among the first of developing fetuses to reach a wide popular audience. Their reproduction in the April 30, 1965, edition of Life magazine sparked so much interest that the entire print run of eight million copies sold out within four days; they won Nilsson the American National Press Association Picture of the Year award, and reached a sufficiently iconic status to be chosen for launch into space aboard the NASA probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The book and its images have figured in debates about abortion and the beginning of life, and the book is the subject of a substantial body of feminist critique.
Foeticide, or feticide, is the act of killing a fetus, or causing a miscarriage. Definitions differ between legal and medical applications, whereas in law, feticide frequently refers to a criminal offense, in medicine the term generally refers to a part of an abortion procedure in which a provider intentionally induces fetal demise to avoid the chance of an unintended live birth, or as a standalone procedure in the case of selective reduction.
Born alive laws in the United States are fetal rights laws that extend various criminal laws, such as homicide and assault, to cover unlawful death or other harm done to a fetus in utero or to an infant that has been delivered. The basis for such laws stems from advances in medical science and social perception, which allow a fetus to be seen and medically treated as an individual in the womb and perceived socially as a person, for some or all of the pregnancy.
Bei Bei Shuai is a Chinese immigrant to the United States who became the subject of international public attention from 2011 to 2013, when the authorities of the state of Indiana charged her with murder and attempted feticide after her suicide attempt allegedly resulted in the death of the fetus with which she was pregnant. In Britain, The Guardian described Shuai's case, as well as those of other women who lose their pregnancies in cases of maternal drug addiction or a suicide attempt, as part of a "creeping criminalisation of pregnancy across America".
Maternal somatic support after brain death occurs when a brain dead patient is pregnant and their body is kept alive to deliver a fetus. It occurs very rarely internationally. Even among brain dead patients, in a U.S. study of 252 brain dead patients from 1990–96, only 5 (2.8%) cases involved pregnant women between 15 and 45 years of age.
On August 20, 2016, a mass killing occurred in Citronelle, Alabama, resulting in the deaths of five people, including a woman who was five months pregnant. They were killed in the early morning in a private residence in a rural area west of the city. It was owned by a brother of Laneta Lester, who had sought refuge there. She and her brother's infant were abducted and taken to Leakesville, Mississippi, by her estranged boyfriend, Derrick Dearman. He released her that day. Lester returned with the infant to Citronelle. She notified police of the killings. Investigators described this mass killing as the worst in Mobile County's history. The house burned down a couple of weeks after the crime.
Maternal-fetal conflict, also known as obstetric conflict, occurs when a pregnant individual's (maternal) interests conflict with the interests of the fetus. Legal and ethical considerations involving women's rights and the rights of the fetus as a patient and future child, have become more complicated with advances in medicine and technology. Maternal-fetal conflict can occur in situations where the mother denies health recommendations that can benefit the fetus or make life choices that can harm the fetus. There are maternal-fetal conflict situations where the law becomes involved, but most physicians avoid involving the law for various reasons.
Dos Partos – cesárea
A US jury has recommended the death penalty for a woman convicted of killing a pregnant stranger, cutting her abdomen open and stealing her unborn baby.
On November 16, 1995, in Addison, Illinois, Jacqueline Williams, 28, her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, and her cousin, Laverne Ward, 24, entered the home of Ward's ex-girlfriend, 28-year-old Deborah Evans.
Ex parte Angela BURTON. (Re Angela Burton v. State).
AN ALABAMA woman has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a pregnant teenager and stealing the still-living foetus from her womb so she could pretend she was the child's mother. The decision disappointed prosecutors who were seeking the death penalty.
A jury in Tuscaloosa, AL, recently convicted a man of kidnapping a fetus from a murdered girl's body.
FRESNO—A woman convicted three days ago of killing a mother and unborn child committed suicide early Saturday in her one-person jail cell, saying the humiliation was too much to stand.
Their move came shortly after a jury in Fresno, Calif., convicted Josefina Saldana of a pregnant Margarita Flores and cutting out her unborn son.
A missing pregnant woman was found dead in a field with her abdomen cut open and the fetus removed, and a 37-year-old woman was in custody after bringing a dead fetus to a hospital.
In 2004, Lisa Montgomery strangled a 23 year old pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was found in her home in Skidmore, Missouri, with her belly cut open and her unborn child missing.
A federal appeals court panel today upheld Lisa Montgomery's conviction in the 2004 slaying of Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Skidmore, Mo., and the kidnapping of Stinnett's unborn child. A jury subsequently sentenced Montgomery, 43, to death.
An Illinois woman pleaded guilty Monday to killing her pregnant friend, the unborn child and the victim's three children in a plea deal that allowed her to avoid the death penalty.
Araceli Camacho Gomez, 27, from Pasco, Washington, was the mother of two children and just two weeks away from giving birth to her son when she met Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong at a bus stop on June 27, 2008.
A Pennsylvania woman has been charged in the slaying of an 18-year-old woman who was found with her uterus cut open and her fetus removed, authorities said Sunday.