Foeticide
Foeticide or feticide as a legal term refers to the deliberate or incidental killing of a fetus due to a human act, e.g. a punch or kick in the abdomen of a pregnant woman. It does not refer to the death of a fetus from entirely natural causes, or through the spontaneous abortion of a pregnancy where the life of the fetus could not be maintained artificially ex utero.
Feticide is punishable as a crime in many jurisdictions. In the USA, more than half of the states have criminalized feticide[1], although feticide associated with a legal induced abortion is not a crime.[2]
In India the term is used to refer to the widely condemned practice of killing female fetuses in an effort to secure male offspring while not having too many children.
Feticide as a medical term has two meanings:
- Termination of a fetus as the first phase of a legal induced abortion from around gestational week 21, usually after detection of a fetal abnormality.[1] The possibility of unsuccessful feticide--resulting in a live baby--is a malpractice concern for physicians. [2]
- Legal induced abortion.
Footnotes
- ^ The Abortion (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2002 (Guidelines for doctors giving an abortion)
- ^ Jansen RP (1990). "Unfinished feticide". J Med Ethics. 16 (2): 61-5. PMID 2195170.
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