🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Casualties in Worldwide Wars. Thirty women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor. Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.” This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside. Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war. An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care. Data analysis and investigations reveal an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards. “This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.” The majority of these attacks have taken place in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined. Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births. The Global Crisis in Maternal Health Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse. Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality. Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability. The Situation in Gaza In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations. Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached. “Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates. The Crisis in Ukraine Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery. “The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians. “In fact, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.” Accountability Evaporates For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health. This absence of consequences has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.” Additional Hotspots In El Fasher, the area was isolated from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses. In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war. The Collapse of Safe Childbirth Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births lacking professional help. “If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher. “Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”