Colombia - Unborn baby cut from mother's womb, Girardot, 2004

Colombian police say they have arrested a woman for stealing an unborn baby from its mother's womb.

The woman faces charges of drugging the child's mother and leading her to a house where her womb was cut open.

Police say the operation to remove the eight-month-old foetus may have been performed with a kitchen knife.

The baby - found with the alleged kidnapper - has been re-united with its true mother, who had been left for dead in the central town of Girardot.

'Not acting alone'

She managed to summon help, despite bleeding heavily from the surgery.

"When I felt my belly, it was empty," Angela Cartagena told a local television station from her hospital bed. "And the baby was crying and crying."

The mother said she remembers seeing the kidnapper leave with her baby wrapped in cloth.

Police believe the kidnapper was not acting alone and are hunting for her accomplices. They arrested their suspect after tests showed a newly-born baby she claimed as her own was not hers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3778663.stm

A woman who was eight months pregnant had the baby snatched from her womb after kidnappers drugged her and performed a rudimentary caesarean section, the woman told Colombian television today.

Sol Angela Cartagena told RCN television she was drugged at a hospital in Girardot in Cundinamarca province and carried by a woman to a remote place on a hillside where the caesarean was performed and her infant abducted.

Cartagena said she arrived at the hospital with her two-year-old daughter for a pregnancy checkup and drank a glass of water she had left unattended for a few minutes.

Immediately after drinking the water, she began to feel ill, she said.

"I felt I was falling asleep, and when I woke up, I was on the hill with my two-year-old daughter by my side," she said.

"I felt as if they had thrown hot water on me, and then I saw a stream of boiling blood," Cartagena said. "My little girl began to scream and call me. Then she told me the woman had wrapped the baby in a sheet and had left quite calmly."


Physicians at the hospital confirmed Cartagena's story.

"The patient arrived bleeding, and after checking her, we were able to verify that she was operated on to remove the baby and placenta," said gynaecologist Carlos Cespedes.


Full Story

A case of foetal abduction where both mother and child survived.
From 2005:
FOETAL ABDUCTION: THE FIRST SURVIVOR; THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY REAL-LIFE STORY YOU WILL READ THIS YEAR. - Free Online Library