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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]
Dos Partos – cesárea