Child destruction

Child destruction is the name of a statutory offence in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Hong Kong and in some parts of 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".[1]

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[2] nor homicide[3] for the purposes of the criminal law. It can also be used to prosecute late abortions.[4]

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.[5]

  1. ^ Knight, Bernard (1998). Lawyers guide to forensic medicine (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 70. ISBN 1-85941-159-2.
  2. ^ That is to say, the offence of administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion, contrary to section 58 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which is defined as "unlawful procurement of a miscarriage."
  3. ^ That is to say, the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide.
  4. ^ Card, Richard (editor). Card, Cross and Jones: Criminal Law. Twelfth Edition. Butterworths. 1992. ISBN 0-406-00086-7. ¶¶11.82–83.
  5. ^ "PRESERVATION OF INFANT LIFE BILL. [H.L.]". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 22 November 1928. Retrieved 18 September 2016.