🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Targets in Global Conflicts. Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor. On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.” This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside. Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war. A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services Although world powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their reliance on 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards. “This is not natural consequences of war. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.” The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined. Deaths have occurred, prevented from accessing care, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies. A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, information is scarce. Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend. Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability. The Situation in Gaza In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for 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 giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached. “Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied 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 forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery. “We are being singled out,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians. “In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.” Accountability Evaporates For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services. This lack of accountability has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.” Other Conflict Zones 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 lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses. In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war. The End of Safe Deliveries A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births without skilled assistance. “When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher. “There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”