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Feticide or foeticide is an act that causes the death of a fetus.[1] In a legal context, "fetal homicide" refers to the deliberate or incidental killing of a fetus due to a criminal human act, such as a punch or kick to the abdomen of a pregnant woman. As a medical term, feticide is destruction of a fetus,[2] for example as the first phase of a legal induced abortion upon detection of a fetal abnormality.[3] Feticide 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.