Feticide

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Feticide or foeticide 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.

As a medical term feticide comes in two different forms:

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.<ref>The Abortion (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2002 (Guidelines for doctors giving an abortion)</ref> The possibility of unsuccessful feticide--resulting in a live baby--is a malpractice concern for physicians. <ref>Jansen RP (1990). "Unfinished feticide". J Med Ethics 16 (2). PMID 2195170.</ref>
Legal induced abortion.