Fetal abduction

Fetal abduction refers to the rare and macabre crime of child abduction by murder of an at term pregnant mother and extraction of her fetus through a crude cesarean section. In the small number of reported cases, 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 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. Historical atrocities of cesarean extraction for fetal murder (not for child adoption) fall outside the subject definition.

Fetal abduction is usually perpetrated by a woman after organized planning. The abductor may befriend the pregnant victim. The abductor is so determined to impersonate a pregnant and puerperal mother that she may use weight gain and a prosthesis to fake a pregnancy and cut herself internally to make it look as if she has given birth. She may 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”. Criminal motives include delusions of fulfilling a partner relationship, child-bearing and childbirth.

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 recorded 302 cases of infant abduction.

"Womb raiding" and "cesarean or in utero kidnapping" are media terms for fetal abduction.

Of the current list of 25 reported cases (not including attempts), 4 of the mothers and 13 of their fetuses survived. (This list distinguishes an attempted fetal abduction as without either murder of the mother or extraction of the fetus. An attempt can include severe injury to the mother and fetus.)

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