Child destruction

Child destruction is the name of a statutory offence in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Hong Kong. The offence of that name has been abolished and replaced in Victoria, Australia.

Child destruction is the crime of killing an unborn but viable foetus; that is, a child "capable of being born alive", before it has "a separate existence".

People have been convicted of the offence for injuring a heavily pregnant woman in the abdomen, such that her foetus dies; for killing a foetus during childbirth; or for performing a late-term abortion.

The purpose of the offence is to criminalise the killing of a child during its birth, because this is neither abortion nor homicide for the purposes of the criminal law. It can also be used to prosecute late abortions.

During the second reading of the Preservation of Infant Life Bill 1928 to 1929, Lord Atkin said:

As the noble and learned Lord has explained, the gap is that, whereas the mother of a child who kills it after it has a separate existence is guilty of what was the crime of murder and is now the lesser offence of infanticide, yet, if she kills the child in the actual course of delivery or within such a short time afterwards that it has not had and cannot be proved to have had a separate existence, it is not an offence.

In England and Wales, the offence is created by section 1(1) of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929:

(1) Subject as hereinafter in this subsection provided, any person who, with intent to destroy the life of a child capable of being born alive, by any wilful act causes a child to die before it has an existence independent of its mother, shall be guilty of felony, to wit, of child destruction, and shall be liable on conviction thereof on indictment to penal servitude for life:

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