“For purposes of criminal law — and also for those of property law, e.g. to become a holder of property and so transmit it again to new heirs, or to enable the father to obtain curtesy of his wife’s lands — birth consists in extrusion from the mother’s body, i.e. in having ‘come into the world.’ If but a foot be unextricated, there can be no murder, the extrusion must be complete, the whole body of the infant must have been brought into the world. But it is not necessary that the umbilical cord should have been severed. And to be born alive the child must have been still in a living state after having wholly quitted the body of the mother.” J.W. Cecil Turner, Kenny’s Outlines of Criminal Law 104 (16th ed. 1952).
birth
birth. The complete extrusion of a newborn baby from the mother’s body. • The quotation below states the traditional legal view of birth. In a few jurisdictions, the state of the law may be changing. In South Carolina, for example, a child does not have to be born alive to be a victim of murder; a woman can be convicted of fetal murder if her baby is stillborn because of the mother’s prenatal drug abuse.
